'The Gambinos' movie review: A remake that could’ve been so much better

Radhika and Sampath are talented actors no doubt, but except for a few moments which convey their characters’ true colours, they’re terribly miscast here.
A screengrab from The Gambinos.
A screengrab from The Gambinos.

The inspiration for the title came from an infamous New York crime family, but the family in The Gambinos has shown up earlier in an Australian film called 'Animal Kingdom'. From beginning to end, it’s the same film albeit not of the same quality.

The matriarch of the crime family nicknamed ‘The Gambinos’, Mariamma (Radhika Sarathkumar), is the Malayali version of the character played by Jacki Weaver in the original; Vishnu Vinay’s Musthafa is James Frecheville’s character; and Sampath Raj’s Jose, Ben Mendelsohn’s. 

When Musthafa’s mother passes away, Mariamma comes to pick him up. She is not accompanied by a driver or bodyguards. She drove there herself. Does this make the film ideal for Women’s Day? Maybe. We learn her eldest son Jose (Sampath), is in hiding, and a couple of cops are on surveillance duty, hoping to catch him red-handed. Their frustration will one day lead them to an impulsive act of violence that turns the family upside down. Anyone from the family or associated with them are going to be affected. And Jose’s arrival takes everyone to places they didn’t want to go.

The innocent and meek Musthafa is thrown into a whirlpool of murder and mayhem, and it’s not going to take very long before he breaks. Not that there’s anything wrong with doing a remake, but when the material is already ready, you start pondering the various dimensions it can take when adapting it for a Malayali audience. We have seen filmmakers like Vishal Bharadwaj take on more complex subjects in the past. Look at Maqbool (adapted from Shakespeare’s Macbeth) or Omkara (from Othello).

As some filmmakers say, casting the right people gets most — or at least, half — of the job done. That’s not the case with The Gambinos. Radhika and Sampath are talented actors no doubt, but except for a few moments which convey their characters’ true colours, they’re terribly miscast here. Mariamma is a fierce, strong-headed woman who is capable of getting emotional too.

She could go to any lengths to protect her sons. Jose is the impulsive, unpredictable, Sonny Corleone-type figure who is blamed by his mother for putting the entire family in danger. Sijoy Varghese holds his own as the crime branch officer relentlessly trying to nail the suspects while being sympathetic to Musthafa. Sijoy’s character was played by Guy Pearce in the original.

However, most of the tension gets lost as a result of the dubbing not always syncing with the actors’ body language in more than one instance. The music doesn’t quite gel with the visuals despite Jakes Bejoy being an incredibly talented composer and the overall picturisation (with a slightly yellowish tint) evokes Malayalam television dramas. However, for a debutant, Girish Mattada is not too bad and in his attempt one recognises a need to do something unique with a genre that was redefined by American filmmakers like Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola in the 70s and 90s with films like Goodfellas and The Godfather. 

Vishnu Vinay is aptly cast in a role that requires him to look confused and clueless for most of the film’s runtime. Musthafa, like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, has neither touched a gun nor dealt with drugs before. So the ‘lost in the woods’ look he sports cannot be dismissed as an acting flaw. Also, I’m glad the makers retained the intensity of the original film’s climax. I flinched, despite knowing how it was going to end. If only the rest of the film carried the same energy.

Film: The Gambinos
Rating: 3/5
Director: Girish Mattada
Cast: Vishnu Vinay, Radhika Sarathkumar, Sampath Raj

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