‘Chappa Kurish‘ is a strange name for a Malayalam movie. Everybody was wondering what the name meant when they first heard the movie title. Later we learned that it is the Fort Kochi slang for ‘Head or Tail’ and the movie held true to it’s title, portraying two different lives in contrast to each other. The movie is directed by cinematographer Sameer Thahir (his directorial debut) and he also shares the writing credits with Unni R.
The story is simple and contemporary and it has been woven in a credible manner. The protagonists of the movie, Arjun (Fahad Fazil) and Ansari (Vineeth Srinivasan), live in the same city but in two different worlds. Arjun, a successful young businessman and a playboy who is engaged to Ann (Roma) but also has a relationship with Sonia (Remya Nambeesan), his colleague. Ansari is a cleaning boy in one of the super markets in the city, who is always ridiculed by his boss and almost everyone else except Nafeeza (Niveda) – his love interest. The story gets interesting when Arjun loses his iPhone and Ansari gets hold of it. Arjun desperately wants to get his phone back because it contains the video clip of his private moments with Sonia and it can jeopardize his upcoming wedding and Sonia’s life altogether.
Ansari doesn’t easily give the phone away and it is not because of the video clip (he is not aware of it) or he wants to sell it. It is simply because this phone is a powerful tool that he could ever get. He even tells his love interest once that, “when you have this phone, you don’t have to be afraid of anything in this world“. He enjoys it when Arjun pleads to him and address him as “Sir” because he never had respect from anyone else in this world. He loves it even more when he could use Arjun to slap his boss, or to pour black oil on the Volkswagen of a woman who accused him of misbehavior and got his boss to make him apologize to her (for something he never did).
Eventually, Ansari decides to give the phone back when Nafeeza insists. But things go out of hand when the mobile shop owner, who offers to help Ansari to charge the phone battery, extracts the clip off the phone and upload it to YouTube under the title “Mallu Boy and Girl New“. The video goes viral thereafter and Arjun goes to find Ansari on his own.
Almost everything in this movie is told honestly. The plot, the characters, how they respond to each other and situations of the story are all so honest and natural. It is this honesty that I liked about this movie. Fahad as Arjun and Vineeth as Ansari have given wonderful performances. With their body language and acting, they have made their characters credible. I never liked Vineeth Srinivasan in any of his movies until now (Fahad also was disastrous in his first movie), but Ansari is one character that fits him like a T and he has done full justice to his role. Fahad is to be noted for his top-notch, matured performance.
There are a few firsts about this movie when it comes to Malayalam cinema. Except for one song sequence, the entire movie was shot on Canon 7D, a still camera (apparently, the Hindi movie “Stanley Ka Dabba” and parts of Hollywood movie “Black Swan” were also shot with Canon 7D). The traditional ‘blossoming-flower syndrome‘ for love-making scenes has moved way to a two minute smooch between Sonia and Fahad. Remya Nambeesan has to be applauded for having the guts to do it in a Malayalam movie. The climax action sequences were realistic, something that you also would do in real life, if put yourself in a similar situation. We would think that it is going the ordinary way when the movie clip goes online and we see Sonia going to the toilet with a blade. But we spot her in an airport later and she is also joined by Arjun soon. Jomon T John on camera and Rex Vijayan (Avial fame) with music also have done commendable work. But I wish Rex’s background score was a bit more tight at scenes like Arjun chasing Ansari.
If there is anything that I would complain about this movie, it is the scripting and editing and those are not small things to pass on. Had there been a tight script and an editor who knew his job, this movie would have easily become the best Malayalam cinema in the recent years. But in many scenes the movie loses it’s pace when it should have kept it’s viewers gripped to their seats.
My rating: 
(Image courtesy: Wikipedia)