Vela is a tense clash of two men, one with nothing to lose and another unable to digest the bitter pill that he isn’t as powerful as he once assumed. The two men desperately hold on to their jobs and are willing to go to any extent for it. However, this extent differs in both cases. The other difference is one of the men, Ullas Augustine (Shane Nigam), has mentally prepared himself to forego his job in the pursuit of true justice. The same doesn’t apply to the other. Interestingly, it’s Ullas—who got into the force the hard way—who is capable of letting go as opposed to Mallikarjunan (Sunny Wayne), who enjoys legacy-afforded privileges. When seen as a whole, the film’s title can either mean a job or kaala vela, a festival involving oxen, the backdrop of which the film’s events take place.
Perhaps the choice to unravel some plot details in a slightly vague and scattered manner was deliberate on the makers’ part—to mirror the situation of civil police officers assigned to control rooms attending distress calls who have to work with incomplete information to confirm their veracity. There is also a minor attempt at non-linear storytelling. But one can only do so much with a narrative devoid of an eminently gripping conflict and features minimal characters. While I don’t see it as a major problem, this experimentation risks throwing some viewers off, particularly the opening portions, which are hazy in terms of the timeline of events. However, this confusion clears up towards the end, giving us a clear picture of the succession of the events.
The film also runs the risk of making one lose interest in it after a certain point, owing to the slight vagueness with which some backstories and motivations get revealed, especially when combined with the slightly overlong duration. There were a few mid-portions where I found my attention dwindling due to having the protagonist occupy himself with chasing information that leads nowhere.
But one presumes there’s a reason: to give a sense of the frustration experienced by Ullas, who happens to be in a profession that sometimes deals with the most absurd fake calls. How about a man wishing to send a poem to the Chief Minister? Or a young woman with a beverage delivery request? Or a man enquiring about the possibility of a police job. There are more, and the nightmare is unimaginable. Capturing the angst of this job well is one of the film’s merits. Keen-eyed cinephiles exposed to a steady diet of foreign cinema are bound to compare Vela to the 2018 Danish thriller The Guilty (and its American remake starring Jake Gyllenhaal).
But a few evident similarities aside, Vela doesn’t operate on the same frequency. It’s predominantly a battle of wits between a corrupt senior and a junior cop. Its principal novelty factor and USP is the uneasy and volatile psychological warfare between Ullas and Mallikarjunan. Shane plays, and effectively so, his character as someone capable of gathering his bearings and fighting back despite being humiliated on more than one occasion.
Ullas feels increasingly bothered by not only the oppressive environment of his workplace but also the bitter realisation that his idealism has no value in a place rife with corruption, sometimes in the most unexpected corners. What does a man do when he experiences such disillusionment? Does he take the dark path that Mallikarjunan already did, or does he forge ahead with his integrity intact?
And to save the best for the last, Vela is a showcase for Sunny Wayne’s finest performance since Appan and Adithattu. It’s a testament to the truism that the man can deliver a screen-chewing turn when he is in the company of a script and a filmmaker capable of extracting the best out of him, even when the film may not offer complete satisfaction. Mallikarjunan is that rare role of Sunny where the persona of his character overshadows his real-life one. It’s all there in the body language—aggressive, intimidating behaviour without going over the top. The film, written by M Sajas and helmed by first-timer Syam Sasi, is most gripping when he and Shane are spewing venom at each other.
Film: Vela
Director: Syam Sasi
Cast: Shane Nigam, Sunny Wayne, Sidharth Bharathan
Rating: 3.5/5