Ram Venkat Srikar
Darwin Kuriakose’s Anweshippin Kandethum is a film that stays intensely true to its title throughout. “If you seek something, you will find it,” is the literal meaning of the title and fittingly, the sub-2-hour-30-minute narrative remains resolutely focused on what it “seeks”.
Not the most inventive thriller but it works because of top-notch direction and technical work. The debutant filmmaker borrows Jinu V. Abraham’s assiduous script and lends it a moody, edgy touch that elevates a regular police procedural into something more memorable.
The climax or the resolution, too, seems a little convenient and that Feluda reference — of the story now belonging to a different era of suspense-writing — becomes more apparent at this point.
For the sheer clarity that its makers exude. In Pusuit to do away with the frills and the redundant ruminations of the modern-day murder mystery and offer a film that is engaging and tantalising at the same time.
Darwin Kuriakose invokes a True Detective kind of visual grammar here and soon transports us to the crammy yet picturesque lanes of Chingavanam. There’s something very beguiling about the way the debutant filmmaker functions here.
No doubt that the essence or crux of this film has been found and felt in multiple other outings of this (now-done-to-death) genre but Darwin Kuriakose’s gaze is a distinct one. Saiju Sreedharan’s editing is another great contributor to the overall experience.