Malayalam cinema has always
been a difficult terrain for
remakes as the story lines
structured for audiences
elsewhere, often found it difficult
to gel with the tastes of our
viewers. Even though that is the
case, the recent years witnessed
a lot of remakes in Malayalam,
with very few of them making an
impression among the
spectators. 'Unnam' is the latest
one to add to the list, and this
being the first of the remakes by
the veteran director Sibi Malayil,
there were lot of expectations on
it breaking new grounds in
Mollywood.
And first things first, hats off to
the director for proudly
proclaiming in the opening titles
that 'Unnam' is an authorised
adaption of 'Johny Gaddhar'-the
original brilliant Hindi thriller by
Shriram Ragahavan. For all others
who are ripping off other films
without acknowledgement,
please remember giving right
attribution to the sources had
never taken away the
appreciation due to well made
movies.
'Unnam' is all about a gang of
five, composing of Sunny (lal), an
ex-gangster living in the
memories of his dead wife who
was a singer, a greedy Tommy
( Prashanth Narayan) who runs a
bar ,Murugan (Nedumudi Venu)a
failed gambler , Basheer (Noushi)
a smuggler and Aloyshie (Asif Ali)
a bar singer who maintains a
secret relation with Tommy's
wife Jennie(Rima Kallingal). On an
unexpected call from a Police C I
Balakrishna(Sreenivasan) from
Bangalore, who wants to sell a
bag of heroin worth five crores
in the market at half its rate,
Sunny decides to revert to his
long abandoned ways and alerts
the other four about the
prospects of making easy
money . They brings in 50 lakhs
each in the expectations to
double it in another couple of
days, once they are into the deal.
Things go fine until one of them
decides to jeopardise the plot,
double cross the others and take
flight with the entire money they
had raised collectively. Not just
that, the traitor also manages to
settle back in the gang without
anyone suspecting him of
treachery.
The movie sticks to its original in
the course of events, and the
scriptwriter Swathy Bhasker has
wisely placed the events in the
backdrop of Kochi, though his
dialogue writing is no way
exceptional . But what is missing
from the original is the mood
and treatment of the thriller and
pace at which it unfolds. As dead
bodies pile up and the vengeful
partners try to find out the cheat,
the execution of murders are no-
where brilliant and believable as
with the original.
Once again, the director seems to
be the culprit, who couldn't bring
any thrilling aspects or technical
wizardry including good BGM's
or editing patterns. The sets of
bar and even the flat looks
artificial with props and designs
projecting all over. May be a case
of failed mis-en-scene, the movie
also doesn't feature any intended
gags in its screen time of 130
minutes.
Talking about the performances,
Asif Ali is reasonably better than
his 'Asuravithu', but his
drawbacks are once again visible
in sequences that demanded
heavy emoting. The star of the
film is undoubtedly Prashanth
Narayan. His performances as a
dreadfully ravenous
youngster,and especially when
he realizes the shattering double-
play in the climax lead was
perfect. His dubbing was
excellent at times but in the
opening reels and a few other
instances failed to make an
impact. Lal, Shwetha Menon, K P
AC lalitha and Reema kallingal
were good in their roles though
Reema's hairdo was a bit weird.
Nedumudi Venu and Sreenivasan
- the definite miscasts in their
roles, tried to make their
performances believable, with
little success.
The songs and BGM in the movie
were not up to mark, with the
lyrics even worse. Ajayan Vincent
in camera and Bijibal in editing
just managed create a mediocre
work.
All in all, 'Unnam' misses its
target by a margin, though it is a
rare genre of movie in
Mollywood. Not a badly done film
for most who haven't seen the
original. VERDICT:TARGET MISSED
