Film: Ore Mukham
Starring: Dhyan Sreenivasan, Prayaga Martin, Aju Varghese
Direction: Sajith Jagadnandan
Set the movie in the 1980s and even the 90s, pump up the nostalgia, roll in the yezdis, the bell-bottoms, retro colour tones, and retro music, add the garnishing of references to movies and stars of that era — wham! You have a winner on your hands. Well, not always.
Ore Mukham , the debut directorial of Sajith Jagadnandan, can be cited as an instance of such easy manufacturing and marketing of nostalgia failing to fill in for the drab content, which is a disappointment considering the promising premise. We land up in the middle of a series of murders. A police officer (Chemban Vinod) and a journalist (Jewel Mary) are trying to track down the killer. They discover that the murders have something to do with a twin murder that happened two decades ago. All the fingers point to one person — Zachariah Pothan (Dhyan Sreenivasan).
Now, we are on to the flashback mode, which is an excuse for the 80s nostalgia to kick in. Zachariah is a spoilt rich kid, the college baddie, the serial womaniser, who will go to any extent to get what he wants. And as you might have guessed, that is not what our heroes are expected to do. To satisfy these expectations, we are presented with the misunderstood do-gooder. Around these are woven the typical comic (Aju Varghese and company) and romantic tracks.
The premise had enough scope for mystery and thrills. However, things fall apart in the execution. The game is lost right from casting. The grown up parts of the college kids are all played by actors who have hardly any resemblance to their younger selves, so much so that half of our time is lost in matching the correct characters. Dhyan Sreenivasan, who had put up a creditable performance in his previous film Adi Kapyare Koottamani , visibly struggles here.
An interesting ‘twist’ is stored right at the end of the film, but it hardly creates an impact, because the script fails to build the necessary tension and anticipation while progressing towards that.
Ore Mukham fails to convey both the thrills and the nostalgia, as intended by the makers.
S.R. Praveen
