Joshua: Imai Pol Kaakha Review

Ashwin Ram

Premise: Raahei is a big shot’s daughter, she decides to break up with Varun after he confesses that he is a contract killer. Later, Varun becomes her official security guard when a bounty-for-her-head situation arises.

Writing/ Direction: There is a story, quite thin, but there is a story which is convincing enough to make a decent film especially when a director like Gautham Vasudev Menon is handling it. But it felt like he was completely uninterested in making this movie. The romance portion has no life, filled only with lust and cringe-fest dialogues. The drama isn’t strong enough to make the stunts effective, also the action is neither inventive nor approached commercially. Flat action served with insufficient content never works, the issue lies here too. The lack of connectivity with the characters allows no scope for the twists to impact, and the couple of intended to be surprise elements that exist are pushed all the way towards the end which are of no use. Lame dialogues at serious situations created some unintentional laughter, literally felt like watching a spoof flick for a second. The opening frame of the movie says ‘Four Years Before’, who in the world puts a card like that without even teasing us with a present timeline scene. It is evident that there were budget constraints, but the writer could have altered the location names and the mood accordingly, at least during the post-production stage.

Performances: Varun’s physique suits his bodyguard role perfectly, his efforts to present the stunt sequences are evident on-screen. Sadly he is still an amateur performer when it comes to expressions, also his dialogue delivery at most places are a mismatch. Nothing great but not a bad act by debutant Raahei, but cannot let go of the fact that there is zero chemistry between the lead pair. DD has gotten a meaty role and she has done her job neatly. Krishna gets good enough screen-time, unfortunately most of his portions are intended to be serious but land as jokes.

Technicalities: A couple of melodies from Karthik seemed very promising, but the local style of upbeat tracks didn’t gel at all. Background score is poor as music travels separately from the scenes, also there is no breathing space, even some calm portions have been filled with heavy bass. S.R.Kathir’s camera work is appreciable, many single-shot sequences during fights and some not-so-spacious localities have been captured well. Runtime is a crisp 130 minutes compared to the director’s previous works, but Anthony could have furthermore shaved as it became repetitive after a while. Action is the better craft of this particular film, thanks to the stunt choreographers, some of the fight sequences actually looked cool to watch on the big screen.

Verdict: Action storytelling is a difficult task to achieve. Without enough dramatic strength and uniqueness in presenting the stunts, the film badly suffers even to be a passable one. The poor performances and random usage of music make things much worse. 

JOSHUA: IMAI POL KAAKHA - A Spineless Action Flick!

Rating - 2/ 5.