Director: Midhun Manuel Thomas
Writer: Randheer Krishnan
Cast: Jayaram, Jagadish, Anaswara Rajan, Arjun Ashokan, Senthil Krishna, Dileesh Pothan, Arya Salim
Available in: Theatres
Duration: 144 minutes
Abraham Ozler becomes the second film in the last two years to begin with a not-so subtle narration of Thakshaka’s story, in which he kills King Parikishit by taking the disguise of a worm. If Mammootty’s Puzhu transplanted this tale into the life of a present-day casteist, Ozler uses it ornamentally, giving you the feeling that there’s a lot going on in this police procedural. Midhun Manuel Thomas, who wrote and directed the atmospheric Anjaam Pathira (2020), returns to familiar territory and begins Abraham Ozler too with a series of cleverly written (and shot) murders. The tone isn’t as frightening, but the writing is detailed enough to hook us, right from the first drop of blood.
What adds to its originality is how much of the film revolves around the medical profession. This time, Midhun chooses to write the screenplay and dialogues but relies on Dr.Randheer Krishnan’s expertise as a medical professional for plot and story. This in-turn leads us to fresh territory, including the workings of a medical college and its multi-disciplined student life. But beyond setting, it also throws open the film to a new level of detail with multiple characters explaining very specific medical procedures, at times to a point beyond comprehension.
But you have to go with it because the larger framework of the film is still engaging, even if you feel like specific cases use up far too much screentime. An example of this comes in the way the film uses Dileesh Pothan’s character. We spend considerable amount of time assuming his importance because it’s being played by a familiar actor and because his character’s name is central to the main investigation. But when the film chooses to later repurpose his sub-plot merely as a decoy, it begins to feel convenient and disingenuous.
You might feel the same about the character being played by Jayaram. Now it’s clear as day that the much-loved actor appears before us with a performance that’s not only absorbing but also a career-first. Rarely have we seen Jayaram observe such restraint and discipline without any expression getting punctuated further with a little extra, like he did in his earlier films.
But the issue comes in the form of the writing that has gone in to the person that is Abraham Ozler. What begins at first as a character study about a troubled police officer, soon transforms almost entirely into a generic revenge drama. The film begins with a doctor informing us about Ozler’s mental health issues with the man suffering from depression and the ensuing insomnia as a result of a traumatic incident. But even when you finish the movie, you never sense any resolutions to his state of mind, nor do we know anything more about him than we did at the start of the movie. Even his hallucinations, which start off cleverly, remain ornamental, without it either helping or hampering his ability to solve the case at hand.
And then you get into the issues the movie struggles with when it has to bear the weight of a mega cameo in the second half. The cleverness of the film never really comes back once it goes into this chapter. Not only does the cameo distract us from the urgency of the case but it continues to linger in our minds when the movie moves into a massive 40-minute flashback that is set in the 80’s. Which means that even when you’re sort of engrossed enough to understand the motive behind the series of murders and why it took so long to happen, you’re still waiting to see what the superstar will do when he returns post flashback.
These are some of the issues you might face with a film that has so many things to say but not enough time to say it all. But even so, Midhun remains so strong as a filmmaker that you still expect him to spring surprises. He does and you get a very inventive twist that brings back a lot of the lost momentum, even if it feels a little too late. It’s as though he is so clever in the way he packs in so much that you seldom get the time to pause and reflect on why these events are happening in this order or why it’s so easy to get even tough characters to open up and confess about their past without the need for any real pressure.
Either way, it’s never really about what it’s trying to say as much as it is about how well Midhun is able to say it. By reinventing Jayaram as an actor and by infusing so much information into a stereotypical thriller, Abraham Ozler remains fairly engaging even if you’ve seen it all before. In medical terms (or in the words of most characters in the film), it’s as though the film suffers from acute refractive myopia. But in common parlance, the film forgets the larger picture in its effort to give us great individual scenes.