Chanakyathanthram review: a crass one to sit through

There is a texture to almost every film that Kannan Thamarakkulam has done in his brief career as a film maker. If you are someone who was okay with that outdated and outlandish way of film making, his new movie Chanakyathanthram written by Dinesh Pallath is one movie you won’t find troublesome. I was never a fan of the director for neither his selection of script nor the way he made the films and thus Chanakyathanthram was also an exhausting experience for me.

A criminology rank holder Arjun is our main protagonist. He decides to join this detective firm named Hawks Eye to start his career. He was given initial charges to track down the activities of certain individuals for the company. Things take an interesting turn when Arjun realizes what has happened to some of those people whom he tracked for the company. His mission to solve that mystery is what Chanakyathanthram talking about.

Unni Mukundan appearing in different getups was one of the prime marketing strategies of the film. But in the movie all these are unnecessary fancy dress ideas that one would find cringe worthy. The movie has no real thrill to its credit. The bizarreness of the track comedy in the movie shows us how hollow the script is. The slow motion shots and the background score are annoying after a point. The repetitive pattern of the shots and music will take away the excitement.

In this movie Kannan Thamarakkulam introduces Unni Mukundan as “Action King”. Even though he might not be an action king at this point, one thing is correct; he is good in doing action. In fact, that the only thing he does convincingly. Anoop Menon in a weird look performs the character in his usual style. Shruti Ramachandran and Sshivada were fine in their respective roles. Hareesh Kanaran’s character itself was a burden to the film.

The thanks credit of the movie had one name which surprised me and that was All Kerala Kannan Thamarakkulam Fans. I never knew outdated movie making can create fans. Thamarakkulam has no intentions to bring change to his movie making style and applies the same old formula to create thrills and emotions. Dinesh Pallath’s writing only restricts him from any possible improvements. The efforts to create thrill and twist goes terribly flat. At the end the script makes it a take on women safety, but the mess it created was so huge that you won’t want to give it grace mark for that.  One love song in the movie was good, but the background scores were tacky.

Chanakyathanthram has nothing original to its credit. It sort of tries to include one would recognize with a CID film, but the flimsy inclusion of all these makes the movie a crass one to sit through.