Ottu movie review: Arvind Swamy returns to Malayalam cinema…that’s the review

Language: Malayalam It’s a mystery why so many human beings chase eternal youth. Arvind Swamy is a fine example of why you should not. When he was young, he was a good-looking man with a pretty face, in a world full of good-looking men with pretty faces. Since then, life has written such interesting and unique stories into that face that now, it is near impossible to look away from the 52-year-old him. I spent much of Ottu thinking of how wonderful age has been to this popular veteran actor who grabbed the national spotlight with Mani Ratnam ’s Tamil blockbusters Roja and Bombay in the 1990s. Ottu marks his return to Malayalam cinema after nearly three decades. Ottu stars Arvind with the man of the moment from the Malayalam film industry, Kunchacko Boban . It is a suspense saga in which Kunchacko’s character Kichu is promised money by a shadowy agency in exchange for help with getting a gangster called David to recover his memory that he lost a while back. With this goal in mind, Kichu befriends the older man (Arvind) and takes him on a road trip from Mumbai, where he is based, to Mangaluru. If the basic plot of Ottu (meaning: betrayal) is sifted from its packaging, it has promise. Two twists in the latter half are well-conceptualised and surprising. What lies between the beginning and those twists though are clichés, over-stretching and an incessant background score. Early in Ottu, a warning sign of what is to follow comes in the form of a long song filmed on Kichu and his girlfriend Kalyani ( Eesha Rebba ) that plays the role of summarising and encapsulating their entire relationship for the audience, in the way such songs do in formulaic commercial cinema that does not want to invest time in building its female characters. To make matters worse, the tune is nothing to write home about.

Matching the drabness of this musical interruption is an excessively lengthy gun battle in the climax that is unexciting, shot unimaginatively, looks mechanical and adds not even an atom of a thrill to Ottu. Along the way there is also an incongruous song and dance in a nightclub centred around Deepti Sati, with Kunchacko joining in. Such numbers are usually inserted into films to titillate the heterosexual male audience with a dash of female glamour in men-centric cinema and to offer some raunchy relief from a sombre storyline. In the case of Ottu, the scene also appears to have been set up to give Kunchacko the opportunity to remind the audience that he can dance. To be fair, Deepti is not shot crudely here as women tend to be in such interludes. The music is plain though, the choreography lacks novelty and little effort has been made to fit the scene smoothly into the narrative without disrupting its tone. It just pops up. And it is forgettable. The Mumbai-Mangaluru drive in Ottu passes through some of India’s most scenic countryside, and cinematographer Gautham Sankar delivers visuals to die for on that journey. His best work in the film though is reserved for the shooting of Arvind Swamy’s face and physique, without resorting to the stock frames that are favoured for male stars by a certain type of commercial Malayalam cinema.

The actor brings more to Ottu than his screen presence and the audience’s nostalgia for him. He gives his character a world weariness that is visible in every word and look, even when he gradually transforms into a different human being as the story progresses. There are not many supporting parts in Ottu, and the ones there are are thinly written. None of the others are as embarrassingly bad though as the poorly conceived cameo by Bollywood actor Jackie Shroff. The only characters that writer S. Sanjeev and director Fellini T.P. have paid attention to are the ones played by the two leading men. Kunchacko has had a great year so far at the box-office, with critics and on the festival circuit. Ottu comes to theatres right after _Nna, Thaan Case Kodu_ ’s four-week run in theatres across India. Since he has been challenging himself with a crop of excellent and varied films in recent years, it can only be assumed that Ottu was better on paper than it is on screen. I enjoyed the way he alters his body language to appear much  younger than his approximately 46 years and much junior to Arvind Swamy with whom he has nice on-screen chemistry. Beyond that, the script gives him little to bite into. Fellini’s first film, _Theevandi_ starring Tovino Thomas and Samyuktha Menon , had an unusual concept but fizzled out in its second half. Ottu has a premise with potential but starts sputtering early on in the absence of a worthwhile script. It picks up in fits and starts, but the engine dies on it long before the final scene. The film’s full name is Ottu: Chapter 2. If that is meant to indicate that there will be a Chapter 1 and maybe even 3, heaven help us. Rating: 1.5 (out of 5 stars)  This review was first published when Ottu was released in theatres in September 2022. The film is 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 Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.