No grey in this generic thriller

Malayalam cinema’s recently renewed preoccupation with crime and police procedurals — with a decent strike rate, to be fair — leaves 'Officer On Duty' with a built-in issue of viewer prejudice. Jithu Asharef’s debut feature consistently mines the tropes of the genre; it appears at ease with the formula and does not do so much to slap the viewer out of this prejudice.

There is a sense of the familiar in the setting. Harishankar (competently played by Kunchacko Boban), an edgy police officer investigating lowly gold frauds, is an interesting composite of the wronged ones. 

You know him; he is the sharp, hardened workhorse with a history of insubordination, reticent even among the loved ones, something deeply personal sparking off his bouts of rage.

Even with a predictable arc, he remains the necessary moral core of this story of guilt, grief, and retribution.

What makes this angry, abusive man vulnerable? Is he seeking in his work closure from his trauma? — These questions keep you half-invested through the film’s first act. Writer (and former cop) Shahi Kabir hits form with the detailing as the investigators chase leads in counterfeit gold, sex videos, and a series of suicides.

The segments around the crime scenes are effective; there are interesting insights into death, by choice and otherwise. Can handwriting on your suicide note reveal the firmness of your decision? What could dry leaves on a terrace tell you about home invasion and possible murder?

'OOD' gets its run-up right before it, rather unobtrusively, sets up the first big reveal in a chillingly staged sequence around lemonade and living-room conversation. What really jars here is the stylisation; the film plays to the high riffs even when a bit of pause and slow thrill could have served it better. Harishankar’s pain and inner conflicts are lost in the celebratory, hero-cop background score. His sense of loss is treated to perfunctory, memory-reel song bits.

The film gets progressively flat as it builds up its young antagonists — a gang of scowling degenerates who flaunt long hair and cocaine lines, mouth inanities in English, and look comically earnest. Their trigger — an incident that sets in motion an act of revenge – has enough in it to be explored for a closer look at the madness that drives their motive. This, however, is not a film interested in the why; it has to switch back to its binaries and close out with violent payback.

'OOD' is different from Kabir’s acclaimed work ('Joseph', 'Nayattu', and the terrific 'Ela Veezha Poonchira' which he also directed) in that it drops gritty realism for the more mainstream sensibilities. The trade-off returns mixed results in a fairly entertaining but compulsively generic drama about vengeance and vigilante justice.