KalamKaval - Mammooty, Unbound

KalamKaval

Malayalam - Crime / Thriller
139 min
SonyLiv

My reviews are spoiler-free. I make a small exception this time to compel you to watch this film.

The first ten minutes of Kalamkaval are a demonstration of the sheer quality of one of India’s greatest actors.

A middle-aged man, Stanley Das, is watching television with his family when he receives a phone call. He speaks to the caller, a male colleague and gets up to leave for the night. His wife checks on him and Stanley gives her the domestic “you know how it is” expression.

We then see him in his car, listening to a Tamil song, with a younger woman for company. The subsequent shot finds them in bed, having a playful conversation after the conjugal act. The man casually smokes as they joust about their future. He tells her that he wants to end this, revealing that he came prepared to kill her if she did not agree.

In on the joke, the conversation continues. The music turns sinister as he playfully wraps a dupatta around her neck. They laugh, the score tightens, he chews down on his cigarette, the camera zooms in on his face, and we hear the neck snap.

The facial expressions, body language, and voice modulations that Mammootty delivers in just the opening act are reason enough to watch the film.

Kalamkaval follows policeman Jayakrishnan, played by Vinayakan, who is tasked with solving the case of a woman’s disappearance. The investigation eventually reveals itself to be one that truly blows his mind. The film shares its inspiration with the impressively made Hindi series Dahaad, (starring Sonakshi Sinha and Vijay Varma).

Hats off to the filmmakers for an excellent casting decision that flips the typical on-screen personas of its two leads.

Mammootty is stunning as Stanley Das — smooth when he talks, smoother when he courts (switching accents as he crosses state lines), and ruthless when he kills (oh, when he chews that cigarette!). This is, quite seriously, a never-before-seen version of him.

Vinayakan is superb in his antithetical performance. We have seen many of his outbursts in other films (and in real life), and we keep waiting for one here. Instead, he downplays everything, staying professionally, even as his face begins to show frustration. Never losing control until the very end, when he finally lets go.

The writing and direction by Jithin Jose are quite good, but there are too many conveniences and shortcuts. Stanley Das’s day-to-day life is never shown, and his cross-border movements are never placed under serious scrutiny. This is something Dahaad could explore in greater depth because of its mini-series format, which allowed room to construct a more elaborate alibi for the perpetrator.

Here, Jithin Jose clearly establishes Stanley as a psychopath who “enjoys” killing and cannot get enough of it. Given the calibre of the actor, there was an opportunity to trade fifteen minutes of the slightly repetitive courtship sequences for a darker, more intimate exploration of his mind. There are subtle hints — notebook drawings of victims and images of him growing up as a hunter — but this thread is never fully mined. That said, the film moves briskly, especially in the second half.

The score by Mujeeb Majeed (Eko, Kishkinda Kaandam) once again falls into the category of “I have heard this somewhere, but it is not bad”. Interspersed with 1980s Tamil music and tense interludes, it is an effective background score.

In the end, Kalamkaval is more than a decent film, well worth watching for the performances alone. It salutes one of India’s greatest actors and stands as yet another reminder of how he continues to reinvent himself in his fifty-third year in cinema.