CBI 5: The Brain movie review — Scrapes through by riding on nostalgia and Mammootty’s towering presence 

Language: Malayalam  The first clue to where this film is headed lies in its grandiose title, CBI 5: The Brain. This is the fifth instalment of the popular CBI franchise that began with Oru CBI Diary Kurippu in 1988. Each one has been directed by K. Madhu, written by S.N. Swamy and starred Mammootty as CBI officer Sethurama Iyer, an icon of the agency and a genius. But why “the brain”? The choice of words is a harbinger of the film’s tendency to stuff ill-fitting English lines into conversations throughout the narrative, all of them stiffly written and awkwardly delivered.   CBI 5: The Brain begins with CBI officers Balagopal (Renji Panicker) and Vinay (Ramesh Pisharody) addressing a class of new IPS recruits. The lecture leads to a discussion about how Iyer solved a series of murders that came to be known as the Basket Killings in their time. Curious nickname, but again, inexplicable.   The mystery is initially interesting. A minister dies of a heart attack on a flight. This is followed by a crop of tragic deaths – an accident, a suicide, a hit-and-run incident. The CBI is called in to crack the case. Enter: Iyer. Although a hero’s late entry is a cliché in commercial cinema to get the audience excited about the arrival of a superstar – usually male – on screen, and Mammootty’s directors have had a particular fondness for this device for a long time now, it can still be entertaining when well handled. In    CBI 5 though, the effect is unremarkable.   [caption id=“attachment_10647001” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Mammootty in a still from CBI 5: The Brain[/caption] Some thrillers pride themselves on challenging the viewer by being so oblique that they offer only fleeting glimpses of crucial pointers. In CBI 5: The Brain, the music, camera angles, acting and/or dialogues are used to over-explain every reason for suspicion, despite which we are left with some loose ends Shyam’s background score for the early CBI films was sharp and energetic. Much water has flowed under the bridge and through Malayalam cinema’s music landscape since then, and in CBI 5: The Brain, Jakes Bejoy’s score feels almost generic, most notably the theme assigned to Soubin Shahir’s character. Yes, yes, we get it, he is meant to be an eerie fellow. How much will that point be underlined?   Oru CBI Diary Kurippu became a landmark because of the hero’s methodical approach to investigations, and conversations that sounded real, belying the pace and hectic activity on screen.

Instead of staying true to the original’s tone, CBI 5 throws bombastic and stilted lines into the mix in what appears to be a misplaced attempt at contemporisation.

This is ironic because a low pitch would have ended up echoing the middle-of-the-road slice-of-life new Malayalam New Wave that has been winning over audiences in Kerala for the past decade or so, and increasingly now outside Kerala too.   Sethurama Iyer’s trademark meticulousness remains, and for the first half, CBI 5’s plot offers a fair share of suspense. After a while though, it becomes too convoluted, too crowded with people and twists, and towards the end, those twists are too contrived to be convincing.   When the climactic revelation is made, the casualness towards mental health is off-putting. This is a far cry from the extreme sensitivity and awareness of mental well-being that Malayalam cinema has shown in recent years in a range of films including, perhaps most prominently, _Kumbalangi Nights_ and _#Home_ . CBI 5’s impressively mounted opening credits may hold greater meaning for those who have been following the series, but even for those who have not, they serve as a reminder that this is a legacy film. The reliance on nostalgia works in the scene featuring Jagathy Sreekumar because it is poignant irrespective of whether you have watched the earlier films or know of the actor’s medical condition in recent years. It falls flat, though, in the jocular treatment of the recurring character Sathyadas (Saikumar). Unless you have seen the previous CBI instalments, the jestful tone even in his introductory scene is inexplicable. It has been 17 years since the fourth film was made, and a whole new generation of movie-goers are now visiting theatres, so it makes no sense to leave such a major portion of the film dependent on the public’s memory of Parts 1-4.   The cast of CBI 5: The Brain consists of many artistes with a solid track record, but they are either wasted here or left to struggle with inadequate writing. The Kerala State Award winner Swasika , for instance, is given a minor, under-explored role. So is Dileesh Pothan.   The effort to keep Soubin Shahir’s character intriguing and intimidating has the reverse effect – the screenplay is trying too hard with him, and so is the actor. To see Soubin misfire after so many back-to-back bull’s-eyes, including most recently in _Bheeshma Parvam_ , is disappointing. Anoop Menon gets far more to chew on in the script, but is unable to handle it.   It can be exasperating to watch a film leaning too obviously on Mammootty’s larger-than-life personality to get by. Whatever CBI 5’s errors may be, thankfully it does not go the whole hog on this front with a surfeit of low-angle shots and a raucous signature tune or some tacky quirk for Sethurama Iyer set in the mould of _The Great Father_ , _White_ and some of the other terrible films that the legendary actor has chosen to star in in the past couple of decades. CBI 5 does let Mammootty dominate every scene in which he is present, but it holds back enough to allow the actor’s naturally towering presence to do its job. It is not as if Mammootty does anything new here, and the fact is, he falters with those oddly written English lines, but he is who he is, a giant who we have grown up loving, an actor who continues to imbue Iyer with dignity and gravitas, and ultimately, he is CBI 5’s’s saving grace.   Rating: 2.5 (out of 5 stars)  This review was first published when CBI 5: The Brain was released in theatres in May 2022. The film is now streaming on Netflix. 

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial  Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.