Mafia: Chapter 1
Written & Directed by: Karthick Naren
I wanted to like this film so much, because D-16 was the film that inspired me and introduced me into the genre of investigative thrillers. I also get inspired by Karthick Naren's shorts like Pradhi and Oomai Kural. Somehow, this film right from the opening prologue, it didn't engage me. It might be because the protagonist or the other actors didn't seem real when they were speaking and the one-liner of the film, ie the number of events that happen in the film seemed so less and loose. In spite of the film not having songs or other side tracks, when there isn't enough number of events or enough story over a certain duration of the film, it can get boring.
The plot and the core conflict of the film is so cliche, in the beginning it starts as a cat and mouse story and when the hero acquires the drugs, the villain kidnaps the family of the hero and asks the hero to return the substance. Now, the hero has to rescue his family from him. The hero sends some guys in the villain's place to check his family and he knows a detail about that and for this, the villain is 'impressed'. In spite of there being some hurdles in the way, the writing felt so convenient. The audio-visual quality of the film is good because of the strong technical, especially the sound team but I didn't find any impressive auteurist filmmaking/style in this film either.
When you watch Vada Chennai and see someone speak something about drugs, it feels authentic and that this person has been there and done that, here it felt like he is just making a film about his idea of the drug world. One thing to appreciate is Karthick's conviction to create his world and some characters in it, but it's just that the world isn't grounded enough to feel authentic and it isn't fantasy either so that we surrender to the filmmaker entirely without using our brains.
No comments:
Post a Comment