‘Unpredictable’ is generally a positive word, when it is used to talk about a movie’s script. It would mean that the script had enough in it to keep the audience guessing, whetting their appetite for thrills and chills. Shaji Padoor’s debut directorial Abrahamaninte Santhathikal , scripted by Haneef Adeni, is unpredictable too, but not in a positive sense, except for a few moments towards the ending.
- Director: Shaji Padoor
- Starring: Mammootty, Anson Paul, Kaniha
The unpredictability here is about the storyline, with new story threads getting added to the narrative at regular intervals. The movie, for most of its duration, seems to have a confused existence, on whether it is a thriller or an emotional drama. It all begins with the police hot on the trail of a serial killer, who leaves biblical clues at the site of each of his gruesome killing.
The stage is set for supercop Derrick Abraham (Mammootty) to track down the killer. Before one begins to wonder whether the film is about to follow the set route seen in recent thrillers, the killer is nabbed and the film shifts to quite a different story, to the core theme of how an officer of unmatchable integrity would tackle the biggest challenge of his career, when someone close to him turns out to be a suspect in a case.
Like many of Mammootty’s recent cop movies, it is his style quotient that the film aims to tap here, but Shaji seems to have tempered the obsession with style, and has some substance to support it. So, there is fewer of those close-up shots of sunglasses and leather jackets. But, only if they managed to cut themselves free from all the larger-than-life persona of Abraham, the film would have stood a notch higher than where it stands now.
Loudness, literally in the form of the never-ending background score, and in how the drama itself is treated, becomes another drawback. The relationship between Derrick and his younger brother Philip (Anson Paul) held out many possibilities, but were left unexplored. For Mammootty, much like his recent outings, there is nothing here to challenge the actor in him. The two female characters have nothing much to do in the few minutes of screen space that they both get.
Abrahaminte Santhathikal for all its cliches and failures redeems itself a bit in the climax part, but it still is not enough to lift what is an otherwise average fare.
