Two revenge-thirsty brothers enter a local toddy shop, which also strikingly has families seated inside. One of them turns up the volume of the radio hanging on the wall as a folk song starts playing. As the song progresses, men and women who are inebriated start dancing to the tune along with the brothers.
Amidst the celebration, a brawl starts, and it is mayhem all over. While one brother is more into street fighting, the other is more focussed with swaying along with the song that is being played in the background as he keeps on taking down one after the other.
This particular stretch, filled with extreme chaos and so much swag, has an unhinged hook to it. It leans more towards style than substance, yet, it works on its own. Anchakallakokkan, with its writing that leaves a lot to be desired, does have a few such well-choreographed and wacky passages but only sporadically.
The film is set in the late 1980s in a Kerala-Karnataka border village. Sometime soon after the infamous police atrocity in Thankamani village, which is mentioned a couple of times in the first hour to establish the time period and political landscape, the film opens with a late-night drinking session headed by a landlord, Chaapra (Sreejith Ravi).
It soon ends up with him getting stabbed inside a forest while in pursuit of hunting a wild boar. The following day, Vasudevan (Lukman Avaran) arrives at this village to join as a constable, immediately after his training period, in a visibly dilapidated police station. He’s unmistakably a weak-kneed man with a stammer, who’s averse towards bloodshed.
The station’s main man is the head constable Nadavaramban Peter (Chemban Vinod Jose), a seemingly charming cop. Also, we see Chaapra’s reckless and inseparable sons who are on an insane pursuit to avenge their father’s murder without any regard for the law of the land. The film then follows the unraveling of the mystery behind the murder.
The screenplay, co-written by Vikil Venu and the director, seems to have aimed at a neo-noir exploration of the underlying bestiality of men as a whole in the guise of a murder mystery with a volatile tone. However, most often, it fails to make you invested in its characters, who display various shades of grey. Additionally, the manner in which the suspense is repeatedly built by rewinding an incident from a different perspective feels anything but organic. After a point, it starts feeling like an editing gimmick to mask the mediocrity of its unimaginative writing.
In between, we are also introduced to Vasudevan’s traumatic childhood involving a dysfunctional family through one of his nightmares. This memory becomes crucial to the turn of events later, but we can hardly connect with the following revelations as it fails to effectively foreshadow the character’s arc. On the same note, the narrative trying to bring in the performative art form Poraattunaadakam as a leitmotif surrounding his character lacked clarity. The less said about its women characters with hardly any agency or identity, the better.
Director Ullas Chemban does have some tricks up his sleeve in its briskly paced former hour while drawing inspiration from the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie’s penchant for raw violence. The same cannot be said about its erratic latter hour when almost everything goes for a toss as it turns out to be yet another unexciting revenge affair. While the technical front aids the film greatly in giving it a slick look, Arun Mohan aka Armo’s visuals exploring the vast expanses of the rustic village also felt reminiscent of Amal Neerad’s work for Iyobinte Pusthakam.
Chemban Vinod Jose as Peter is not really a departure from the portrayals he has already done, even if there is a conscious attempt to make his character’s arc unique, and he has approached it like clockwork. Lukman Avaran as Vasudevan also fits the part, especially when he has to showcase the timid nature of his character. In the supporting cast, it’s Manikandan Achari who leaves a mark, but it’s also unfortunate to see him getting stereotyped repeatedly.
Anchakkallakokkan is as much an ambitious look at malevolence as it is an uninspiring revenge potboiler.
Film: Anchakkallakokkan
Cast: Chemban Vinod Jose, Lukman Avaran, Sreejith Ravi
Director: Ullas Chemban
Rating : 2.5/5