Vaarikkuzhiyile Kolapathakam Review: an average thriller

The script of the movie Vaarikkuzhiyile Kolapathakam had the scope to be an engaging thriller. But the making of this movie by Rejishh Midhila is a bit compromised commercially and there is a shortage of intrigue in the build-up towards the climax. Even though the movie never becomes boring, the excitement factor was on the lower side making it an average thriller.

The movie is set in a village where they have a priest named Vincent Kombana who is like a rowdy. He once aspired to be a police officer, but eventually became a priest. So he has this police instinct to maintain peace in the society and he uses his rough side to achieve that. The movie shows us a difficult phase in Vincent Kombana’s tenure as a priest when he faces a moral ambiguity when a crime happens in the village.

Rejishh Midhila tries to add layers of back story and hero introduction etc. to the core story and sadly all that sort of sticks out as irrelevant portions. It takes almost the entire first half of the movie to get into the central conflict and till that point, it is establishing the village and its people through random subplots. The issue is that the merging of these subplots into the core story wasn’t happening that smoothly. It almost felt like excessive footage like the whole Lal episode and police officer back-story which was shown at the beginning of the film. If Rejishh Midhila could have blended the initial portions smoothly into the plot, things would have been even more gripping.

Amith Chakkalakkal who has done a fair enough job as a supporting actor in movies makes his debut as a solo here. His style f dialogue delivery suits the rough and tough priest of this film and because of that, he wasn’t really a misfit. Dileesh Pothan plays the next most important character and in my opinion, he was the best performer in the whole film. Shammi Thilakan has a full-length role and was good in it. Lena, Sudhy Koppa, Anjali Nair, Nandu, Nedumudi Venu, Dheeraj Denny and a few more are there in the long list of actors.

In his second film after Lal Bahadur Shasthri, Rejishh Midhila tries his hand in a crime thriller. The conflict here is the uniqueness of the movie and that is precisely the reason why it feels compelling to an extent. Righteousness and the responsibility of his title have put pressure on the priest and the film becomes interesting in the second half when we become curious about how the hero will solve it within the constraints. The second half portions that showed the game between the protagonist and antagonist was nice but needed a bit more intrigue. The methods could have been revealed in a more surprising way to make it edgier. The music and background score was effective and the visuals were also pretty impressive.

Vaarikkuzhiyile Kolapathakam is an idea that deserved better making. They could have either avoided the initial build-up or merged it skilfully for the betterment of the script. And for a movie with just 2 hours of runtime, this one is a passable thriller.