The tag of being a cheat and a master of deceit is not lost easily. Chandu Chekavar, the famed warrior of the Vadakkan Pattu, the folk tales from Malabar, carried around that tag for centuries, before M.T. Vasudevan Nair re-interpreted the tale and gave him some redemption as a misunderstood man in Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha .
Almost three decades later, Jayaraj views the tale through a Shakespearian lens in Veeram . Here, he fuses the Vadakkan Pattu tale with ‘Macbeth,’ which offers immense possibilities with the central character’s guilt trip. For Chandu though, it’s not good news as he gets back the tag of being a deceitful man.
The film does not deviate much from the popular version of the tale, of Chandu’s suppressed hatred towards Aromal Chekavar, whose sister Unniyarcha he is in love with and his endless ambition which drives him to commit a series of murders, through deceit. Where it deviates from is the background in which the film is set. The locales remind one of some imaginary land, not the Malabar of yore. Much of it screams artificial, if the occasional ‘CGI’ (computer-generated imagery) reminders displayed on the screen were not enough.
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The lead actors also add to this feeling of this story happening in another world, despite the North Malabar dialect they speak. Kunal Kapoor makes for a great Chandu in the scenes where he does not have to deliver dialogues. Due to the short run-time, probably aimed at the international audience, the filmmaker seems to be in a hurry to plunge into the action. So, the context is set in a few lines of narration at the beginning and we reach straight to that point in the story where Chandu’s cycle of betrayal will begin. It’s only our own collective memories of the folk tale which prevents the film from falling apart right at the beginning.
Later on though, it drags on aimlessly thanks to a weak script, which is lost in the wide gap that separates the Vadakkan Pattu from Macbeth. Some of the riveting fights do not work, as the audience do not invest emotionally in the characters populating this plastic world. Chandu must be a happy man, for this tale of his deceit and guilt might not stay on much in people’s memory.