Mammootty in the stills of ‘Christopher’ Photo credit: @mammukka/Twitter
When a film proudly flaunts ‘Biography of a Vigilante Cop’ as its tagline, one surely expects a few encounter kills in the narrative. However, nothing prepares for the death toll in B. Annikrishnan’s encounter. Christopher, which are often preceded by gruesome scenes of rape or assaults on women, filmed in a graphically disturbing manner. The events leading up to the encounter killings have been written by script writer Ude Krishna in such a way that even those who demand a fair trial will not blame the policeman for shooting the men, as all these are his behavior in custody. Asking for such a death. Well it all helps to compile this “resume”, which is essentially unimportant.
Trigger-happy cop Christopher Antony (Mammootty) faces a departmental inquiry after he shoots a group of men allegedly involved in a gang-rape. Investigating officer Salikha (Amala Paul) gets ahead of the case, almost piecing together the history of her life, which marks several encounter murders. Well, the history of the competitions makes up the better part of the film. This soon leads to an arch-villain (Vinya Rai) mouthing some menacing lines, all of which will seem ridiculous given how it all ends.
Christopher (Malayalam)
Director: B. Unnikrishnan
The cast: Mammootty, Amala Paul, Aishwarya Lakshmi, Sneha, Siddique, Vinay Roy
Run time: 150 minutes
The story line: Trigger Happy police officer Christopher Antony is facing a departmental inquiry in the case of extrajudicial killing. The film looks at a series of encounters during his career.
After the huge defeat that was. Arato, the B Unnikrishnan-Udaykrishna team attempts some course correction here. Most notably, we are spared the absurd double entenders that are a staple of Udayakrishna’s script. The script mostly sticks to the encounter police story, but without saying anything new and never trying to give a surprise, not even in the climax. It is the familiar cycle of ‘attacks on women-media outrage-encounter killings-social media celebration’ that goes on, each cycle creating a new justification for encounter killings.
Apart from those shooting at the TV screens and a few token workers, no one. Christopher The universe feels that the casualties in the encounter are wrong. So much so that the investigating officer and even the Chief Minister are sometimes bound in praise by Christopher to justify his actions. The original story of the cop itself revolves around the murder of one such police officer, whom young Christopher looks up to with admiration.
What the film lacks, it tries to make up for with star presence and a soaring background score that makes one numb with its repetition. The scriptwriter’s limitless imagination is evident in the punch line of Tharmurthy’s name for the hero’s villain, “If you are Tharmurthy, then I am Samhara Murthy (Lord of Destruction)”. Of course this offends others, “justice delayed is justice denied,” the general public refraining from justifying murder.
For Mammootty, who has been doing well in recent months, it has become the same old. Amala Paul and Sneha get long roles, while Aishwarya Lakshmi’s role is very small. Shine Tom Chacko reprized his infamous interview persona on screen for a second film run.
Christopher There is a long, unfortunate celebration of casualties in the encounter. A poor script is a lesser crime.
Christopher is currently playing in theaters.
