Experiment gone awry

Dhoomam

Malayalam (Theatres)

Director: Pawan Kumar

Cast: Fahadh Faasil, Aparna Balamurali, Roshan Mathew, Vineeth, Achyuth Kumar

Rating: 2/5

A cigarette firm’s marketing man Avinash (Fahadh Faasil) and his wife Diya (Aparna Balamurali) get entangled in a violent mess presumably for the ‘immoral’ deed of Avinash and his company. A ‘voice-only’ hijacker makes the couple pay for their ‘mistakes’ over the phone. A few supporting characters, such as cigar company’s managing director (Roshan Mathew), his uncle-turned-business partner (Vineeth), and a cop investigating the trail of violence (Achyuth Kumar), come and go much pointlessly in between, and that’s Pawan Kumar’s new bilingual film ‘Dhoomam’ (meaning smoke) in a few words. However, to put it in a further nutshell, a single key word — ‘pointless’ — will be enough.

The premise of the 143-minute film appears similar to an amateur college short film that sounds dazzling on paper. Only a better casting and a bigger budget are the points of difference between the two.

Pawan attempts to weave the screenplay in a smart non-linear format, evenly switching between present and past timelines. However it falters as soon as the storyline starts to lose its substance, and also the whole treatment of this suspense thriller seems lackadaisical from the word go. Deprived of even a single standout moment or sequence throughout, the damp squib fails to put the viewers at the edge of their seat.

Though the potentials of brilliant performers such as Fahadh and Aparna have been largely unutilised in a cluelessly wandering film, they give their best to leave an impression. A couple of songs by Poornachandra Tejaswi (the music director) amp up the mood of puzzle-like narrative.

The overused anti-smoking messaging comes across in an unintelligible fashion too, which in turn throws several questions at the whole narrative. The film is riddled with several loose threads and needless sequences. Lacking depth, the characters are treated as mere tools to reach an end (which also doesn’t exist) rather than as human beings with shades.

The acclaimed director’s previous films — ‘Lucia’ and ‘U-Turn’ — made an impact largely for their unconventional filmmaking with quite convincing plot twists. However, ‘Dhoomam’ has only one shock value to the viewer i.e., “how Pawan Kumar ended up making a film entirely devoid of everything that worked for him earlier”.