Christopher movie review: A wake-up call after three lovely Mammootty starrers…

Cast: Mammootty, Amala Paul, Sneha, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Vinay Rai, Shine Tom Chacko, Remya Suresh, Siddique, Vinitha Koshy, Jinu Joseph, Deepak Parambol

Director: Unnikrishnan B.

Language: Malayalam

The past year has felt like bliss for anyone who remains invested in Mammootty’s continuing potential for brilliance and has lamented the number of formulaic, over-the-top, men-centric, regressive, anti-women films crowding his filmography in the past three decades. The back-to-back release of Ratheena’s _Puzhu_, Nisam Basheer’s _Rorschach_ and Lijo Jose Pellissery’s _Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam_ held out the hope that at long last, the Big M has fully committed himself to original thinkers making out-of-the-box cinema. The hope shone bright even though women artistes who look young enough to be his daughters were cast as wife and sister to the male lead in each of these films too. The hope came from their themes and under-statedness.

Like the primary character in Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam who wakes from a slumber to enter a whole new reality, this week serves as a wake-up call for optimists among Mammukka-gazers. How else does one describe the new film Christopher?

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Directed by Unnikrishnan B., written by Udaykrishna and starring Mammootty as a policeman for the millionth time in his career, Christopher is not only packed with clichés and established formulae, it is also an all-out ode to extra-judicial executions and police vigilantism. A celebration of encounter killings by police personnel is not new to commercial Indian cinema, but this film goes several steps ahead of most. Here, the titular hero is not merely a hot head or an honest individual frustrated with a corrupt, inefficient system that does not deliver justice. He is the toast of the media, the citizenry and the filmmaker. The entire Kerala police force – apart from a few individuals – seems to collaborate with him to finish off criminals. And ultimately (not that this film deserves a spoiler alert, but here you go: spoiler alert for the rest of the paragraph) we realise that he has the support of even the top echelons of the government. So confident is he of this backing that at one point he goes so far as to shoot a criminal in an open space in the presence of the police while a large media contingent watches. (Spoiler alert ends)

Christopher is a saviour of women. Characters in the film who condemn his conduct are either criminals, or corrupt politicians, police and bureaucrats, or later change their minds about him. The only person who fits none of the above slots is a lone figure on a TV news channel debate, but he barely gets a few seconds of screen time.

This is not to say that the public in India has never salaamed town square justice. The most widely reported of such recent episodes came after the rape and murder of a veterinarian in Hyderabad in 2019. When the accused were shot dead shortly thereafter by the police who claimed that they did so in self-defence, the din of congratulations on the social media was deafening. Voices of reason were shushed for pointing out that a thorough investigation had not yet been conducted, the dead men’s guilt had not been proven and privileged folk on SM were celebrating only because the accused came from socio-economic backgrounds that ensured they would not be counted as “one of us”. Christopher is not a true-to-life chronicle of this reality, it is a member of the mob. And in its bid for populist appeal, it gets its leading man to do what even famed ‘encounter specialists’ in the real world do not.

Mammukka’s Christopher does not just zero in on “the other” who have no one but activists to speak for them: the faceless poor, nameless tribals, members of various marginalised groups. He does not necessarily bother to hide his crimes. Unlike the actual public, the public in this film display no hypocrisy – they cheer Christopher equally whether the person who he exterminates is poor, middle class or rich, well-known or obscure.

Through all this of course, as is the case with all police dramas starring Mammootty, his swag is never disrupted. Loud signature tune accompanying his entry on screen each time – check. Slow motion exit from vehicles – check. Impeccable wardrobe – check. Since small mercies are all that can be expected from such cinema, I guess I am grateful that he is not incessantly shown walking into the camera in slow motion in Christopher, nor does the camera constantly zoom in on his shoes, sunglasses and pants as it has in numerous films before this one.

It goes without saying that the actor playing the central character’s ex-wife in this film (Sneha) looks as if she could well be Mammootty’s child. Women dot the narrative possibly to avoid accusations that there are no women of worth in the storyline. A fine talent like Aishwarya Lekshmi is wasted in a marginal part. Amala Paul, however, has as significant a role as a human being who is not Mammootty can possibly have in a Mammootty cop saga. Of course her existence in the script too revolves around Him. Still, another small mercy, I guess: Christopher does not erase women completely unlike others of its ilk. And while we are listing those, here’s yet another: Christopher is not screamingly loud and bombastic like the director’s last film, Aaraattu starring Mohanlal, nor crass like the one before that, _Kodathi Samaksham Balan Vakeel_ starring Dileep. Imagine how bad a situation must be if these are the best things that can be said about a film.

One of the nice developments of the past year has been that Mammootty is camouflaging his age a little less than he earlier was. In this film he even has a touch of white in his hair and moustache. There is of course a double standard in increasingly acknowledging your advancing years yet denying space to your female contemporaries to star as your lover and sibling in films. Well, at least this baby step is a relief. Regrettably it comes in a film revisiting a tired, tried and tested template. Christopher is dull. Even Mammootty seems to think so – that could be one logical explanation for why his expression barely changes throughout the film.

But seriously… while Mammootty’s character has a painful past, the effort to portray the man’s pain and emotional weariness comes across more as the actor’s own fatigue and boredom. I get it, Mammukka. I almost dozed off while watching Christopher.

Rating: 0.5 (out of 5 stars) 

This review was first published in February 2023 when Christopher was released in theatres. The film is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. 

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

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