Director: Anup Kurian
Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Aahana Kumra, Vipin Sharma, Vinay Fortt, P.J. Unnikrishnan, P.T. Manoj
In one sentence, The Blueberry Hunt is about the war over a crop of Blueberry Skunk (infamous among cannabis lovers for its special aroma) being cultivated lovingly by Colonel (Naseeruddin Shah) in the jungles of Kerala.
Who is fighting whom? What is the background to these deadly clashes other than that they are to do with expensive marijuana? The film doesn’t bother to establish anything more than the fact that beside Colonel, there is a Bihari guy called Sett (Seth, I presume, Vipin Sharma) who is the buyer of his produce and a local middleman. Several shooters just keep popping up from nowhere – even as the Colonel keeps watch over the crop through the several cameras in the estate in the company of a cartoon crazy dog called Kuttapan.
Or, he plays music to the plants— the choice ranges from Wagner to Yesudas — and keeps searching for shady characters on his ‘Dark Net’. Then there’s a kidnapped girl (Aahana Kumra) foisted on him from nowhere as though the idea was to somehow carry the film forward through their interactions by throwing them together.
The characters seem to be just hanging there in the moment. We know Colonel is the man of many identities (and evidently a crook of sorts) and a vague love story plays in the background. But there is no effort to tell us any more of the back story even though it would, perhaps, have been far more interesting than what unfolds on screen. If the idea was to lend an air of mystery to his character, it fails miserably.
So is the case with Kumra who just fills the screen with her screams, her cries for the mother and dislike for Bihari dad. No wonder then, that in such a scenario an actor of Shah’s calibre looks utterly disinterested and does little other than play with his dreadlocks. Others have little to do other than just be present onscreen.
The film itself remains as sketchy as its characters, sheer plotless indulgence. The narrative is too random (note how the North East girls just pop up from nowhere) and holds little interest; there is no drama nor coherence for that to happen.
The ‘thriller’ boasts of not a single edge of the seat moment. You wait for things to happen but nothing consequential does. The film comes in the midst of a debate about legalisation of marijuana, for medicinal as well as cultural reasons. This could have been a cracker of a film to take the debate forward. But it prefers to remain hazy and tepid in a pointless world of its own.
