The Gambinos Review: this gangster film is a cult comedy

Watching the new Malayalam movie The Gambinos is an excruciating task for anyone with some cinematic sense. You can’t really figure out what’s really happening on screen. People are randomly killing one another and they are trying to make this look like a Godfather type gangster saga. To be honest, this is the perfect example of a wrong reading of a genre of films.

Mustafa, our hero lost his mother and after that, he goes back to his ancestral family of gangsters who ran a drug cartel. Mustafa soon became a part of the operations of the gang and at one point the family faces certain setbacks as police action worked against them. Mustafa’s personal life also becomes problematic due to these issues and the movie shows us how Mustafa manages to break out from all the issues.

The above-written summary isn’t precisely the story of this film. What does it want to convey is still a mystery to me and the movie is trying to mimic gangster movies in the lamest possible ways. Vishnu Vinay is the Santhosh George Kulangara of Sancharam who narrates the working procedure of the Gambinos family. And out of all the cities in Kerala, Girish Panicker chose Kozhikode to be the home ground of the most idiotic bunch of gangsters. We rarely see them do any business and all they do is taking drugs and drinking coffee and alcohol. The movie is not a slapstick comedy and had the responsibility of explaining the logical feasibility of moments. But it had no such plans and the bizarreness just goes on and on making me wonder why is so many characters here brooding.

Director Vinayan’s son has copied the acting of Jayaram in the climax of the movie Friends by not changing his expression from beginning to end. And the most hilarious one was him maintaining the straight face even after taking the revenge by killing the villain. Sampath Raj is that always well-dressed villain with unreasonable madness. Musthafa is always snotting drug. I really think Radhika Sarathkumar never really understood the meaning of what she was saying. Because even the ones who know Malayalam would find it difficult to understand. Sijoy Varghese’s dialogue delivery and slow-motion walks just paved way for unintentional comedy.

In Angamaly Diaries the single shot climax is used to make a great impact of fear among the viewers. In The Gambinos, director Girish Panicker applies the same strategy to just show the interiors of one character’s home. This lack of understanding of how to apply certain techniques is definitely a huge issue here. The gunfire’s and killings in the movie actually look funny. Sakkir Madathil has no original ideas and he is just pondering with typical gangster clichés in a script that doesn’t have any sort of structure. Jakes Bejoy is stranded in the middle of mediocrity with his piece of quality background score.

Once the DVD releases, The Gambinos will become a cult unintentional comedy for sure. And if you have any plans to watch it from theaters, go with a bunch of friends and I can assure you that the experience will be hilarious. If any real-life gangster sees this film, he might end his career right there out of humiliation.