'Bachelor Party' (Malayalam)
Director: Amal Neerad
Cast: Indrajith, Asif Ali, Rahman, Kalabhavan Mani, Remya Nambeesan
Imagine a scene like this. Nearly a dozen gun men in a room fire unscrupulously against each other at point blank. All of them die, leaving the viewer confused about the number of bullets wasted. But our heroes succumb to death only after finishing their last butt of cigarette and they go to hell as in the grandma’s tales. More fun awaits them there with a number of dancers to have an item dance with belly gyration. Sounds queer? Watch 'Bachelor Party' (BP), the latest flick from Amal Neerad, the director whose earlier films were marked for its deluge of slow motion scenes.
If he had made one hero to walk in those films, here it is a big change; it is the turn of five heroes. BP narrates the three days in the life of five childhood friends Geevarghese (Indrajith) Tony (Asif Ali) Benny (Rahman), Ayyappan (Kalabhavan Mani) and Fakeer (Vinayakan) with countless pegs of alcohol and puffs of cigarettes as if in a bachelors’ party with tonnes of bullets.
As umpteen number of films and scenes in addition to comics and computer games are directly or indirectly an inspiration, no marks for guessing the ‘original.’
Mix many genres of films like action, comedy, thriller, musical, gangster, drama, and road in ultra slow-paced frames and serve it with characters appearing in stylish costumes for two hours. That’s BP. At times, the film tries to make fun of everything from the director for his slow paced frames to the clichéd film makers. But the next moment it falls into big trench of nonsense.
Though most of dialogues can be termed as ‘unparliamentary,’ the characters in the film speak in a convincing manner befitting to ‘boys are always boys’ situations, never before in the Malayalam screen. The team, especially Santhosh Aechikanam and R Unni, behind the script, needs a pat for the boldness to rub off those polished ‘filmy‘ dialogues, drenched in the hangover of dramas.
There are few more things which follow you after the film, Rahman in his salt n’ pepper beard, Remya Nambeesan, the singer in her husky voice. The filmmaker tries to convey a message. Crime never pays. But these kind of crimes pay well, if the crowd is any indicator.