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Sep 18, 2008

Suresh Gopi is at it again: Playing a brainiac cop who punches hard and uses English for his punch lines stressing words at the wrong points. Along with a bunch of dumbass assistants who are there for the purpose of doing the hard work and asking crucial questions which could only be answered by His Braininess Mr.Super Cop himself, this is another cop character for Suresh Gopi who doesn't want to shed his police gene. Can't blame him either. If all the roles the producers are willing to offer him are the cop roles, with the meaty ones going to the superstars - Mammootty and Mohanlal, the man has to do something to survive in the industry. 

Nadiya Mather, the main character in the movie is played by Kavya Madhavan. This is one of the rare times a female lead gets a double role. Kavya also plays the role of Nadira, Nadiya twin sister. While Nadiya is an ace shooter, Nadira is the more docile classical dancer. On the fateful night, Nadiya boards Sowparnika Express which goes from Chennai to Mangalore and she is murdered in her First AC compartment. The movie has shades of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, but it is not a good copy. Two other murders happen in the same AC coupe on that same night, both are women traveling alone. One is Shreya Mariya(Suja) an NDTV reporter and the other is Thulasimani, a dancer played by Suja Karthika. If you ask me, both murders are totally useless to the plot, probably that's why Agatha Christie left them out in the first place in the original story. 

Director K.Madhu succeeds in keeping the audience from leaving halfway thru' the film, which is an achievement considering the fact that if you have seen one Suresh Gopi (as)cop movie you have seen 'em all. Kavya gives a good performance in the roles of twins showing as far as acting is concerned she could be trusted with any role. The most serious flaw of the movie is a scientific one. We can see that Nadiya and Nadira are identical twins and not fraternal twins. Let me put it this way, atleast no effort was put into making them look not identical. Identical twins have the same blood group because one egg and a sperm creates two people by splitting one fertilized egg. Super cop Sharaffudin Tharamasi IPS (Suresh Gopi) solves the murder case based on the fact that Nadiya and Nadira have two different blood groups. Hard to believe if you know science. They could have gotten Kavya and say some one like Gopika and claimed them they were twins or they could have had Kavya do both the roles but had a good make up expert work on Kavya so that she could look as two different persons, the argument of different blood groups would have worked. In a story where the murder is committed by a surgical blade, they should have cared to get the medical facts straight.  

There are other interesting characters who inhabit the confines of the first AC compartment which is the scene of three brutal murders. Suraj Venjarammoodu as Thattamangalam Muthu the Ticket Collector with his trademark Thiruvananthapuram accent which stays put no matter what the name and place of origin of his character is one of them. Bindu Panicker excels as the stereotypical mother of female actresses, one of the passengers. Shammi Thilakan as Tharamasi's side-kick Sudarshan wearing colorful pants and turtlenecks with a belt over the turtleneck, is bound to unleash a red/yellow/orange jeans fashion tsunami in Kerala! Siddique has a funny wig and is a music maestro called Ghulam something, then there is a heavily made up Urmila Unni and a bevy of the other characters that one tends to forget. All in all because of the suspense element the movie is bearable and the director has somehow succeeded in keeping the audience interest barely alive till the very end. Good for him.

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