RIFLE RANGE BOY

Golam (Sphere, Malayalam, 2024) Director: Shamjad. This is an exciting whodunnit that fans of Agatha Christie would love. The only thing is that the story is not told in an investigative manner. True, it starts off as a perplexing case where a high-flying entrepreneur is found dead in the office washroom. When the inspector tries to write it up as an unfortunate accidental death, the young investigating just-out police-college ASP, Sandeep Krishna, is cocksure that he smells homicide.   The ASP finds it difficult to understand how the victim could slip and fall to get a fatal head injury on a dry floor. Forensics do not discover any toxins or foul play.  The initial interview with the office staff, CCTV, and good old police work failed to go anywhere. The only thing unusual is a box of tranquilisers in one of the staff's handbags. She claims she has insomnia. An interview with the doctor who prescribed the tranquillisers shows that all the workers in the office suffer fro...

Maharaja (2024, Tamil) Director:  Nithilan Swaminathan If you are fed up watching the same old-time-tested formulaic Indian movies, this one is for you. The story starts as a comedy, but as it goes on, the storyline gets twisted.  Just when you think you know how the story will go, it takes a tangent and yet another. And it goes on and on until it ends with a final twister.  Maharaja, a mild-mannered barber, leads a simple life with his wife and a little daughter. Right in front of his eyes, he sees a lorry, with its driver obviously off its rails, crashing into his house, killing his wife instantaneously. His ‘daughter’ is miraculously saved by a metal dustbin.  Maharajah continues life as a widower and a doting father. One day, his house is broken into, and the metal dustbin that saved his ‘daughter’ goes missing. Maharaja makes a police report.  What happened afterwards is a series of flashbacks, parallel storytelling, police brutality, and police power abuse...

Silence 1: Can You Hear It? Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout Written & Directed:  Aban Bharucha Deohans It is not easy to catch many whodunnit mystery dramas in Indian cinema. Most stories are too convoluted to follow or too outlandish to believe. Sometimes, the investigative officers are given superhuman capabilities and have to single-handedly swashbuckler or chase the villains to the conclusion. That is history.  With more exposure to police procedural TV shows and Hollywood offerings, audiences can no longer be fooled by this dated production. They are demanding more. With the advent of OTT platforms, it seems that newer, bolder, and more realistic scripts, sticking to real investigative police work, are on the menu these days. Many real-life crime dramas are shown as docuseries and movies. These two films with the same cast are fine examples. In Silence #1, a young lady is found dead with a gaping wound on her head by hikers at a popular hiking site. Novice sleut...

Bhama Kalabam (Telegu, The Dance of Fate; 2022)  Written and Directed by: Abimanyu  I learned two things from this movie.  Increasingly, crime is a funny business. This film falls under the genre of comedic crime thriller. The Indian cinemas have graduated from fake fighting with comedians pouncing on villains with their most hilarious bumbling moves. Now, it involves quirky investigators or their blundering assistants. Violence is a necessary mainstay, as, after all, it is a crime drama. So, nitty gritty grizzly details of the killing, striking the jugular and bundling a dead body into a suitcase are accepted as the most natural thing to do. Get a 13+ rating, and everything is kosher. Do not question dragging dead weight around with ease and the ability to keep a deadpan face after committing a heinous crime. If you pass all that, you should, as it is a comedy, remember, then you will enjoy this movie.  Filmed during the pandemic, the moviemakers managed to pull thr...

Vadhandhi: The Fable of Velonie (Rumours; 2022) Writer & Director: Andrew Louis Everybody talks about wanting to know the truth. That the truth should prevail. That the truth will punish the wrongdoer. That the truth will eventually come out, sooner or later. There is a pressing need to discover the truth so that things can be put right so that man-made law can mete justice. Really? Firstly, truth is a double-edged sword. One man's perspective of the truth can be another's blatant lie. Seeing is not believing. How often our senses have played tricks on us. So often, we have been convinced by suggestion. The police can tell that eyewitness accounts can only be believed so much. We are prejudiced by appearance, race, background and stereotyping. Then some are so cocksure about something. Perhaps they have a vested interest or want to be in the limelight, to feel important. Maybe they like to steer the investigation the wrong way because they are involved somehow.  Remember th...

The Mirror Crack'd (1980) Director: Guy Hamilton Gene Tierney was acclaimed for her great beauty in Hollywood. She was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1944 and even had a brief affair with JFK before he had political ambitions. After a performance at a World War 2 fundraiser event, she was kissed by a fan convalescing from rubella. Unbeknownst to her, she was in her early stage of pregnancy. She went on to deliver a baby with multiple birth defects due to congenital rubella syndrome. Gene Tierney spent the rest of her life emotionally disturbed caring for her baby. When Agatha Christie read about the actress in 1962, her creative juices must have worked overtime to imagine the feelings of a grieving mother. Gene Tierney Of course, there cannot be Agatha Christie's whodunnit with no murders.  Ms Marple, in 1953, is residing in a small village in the English countryside. A film crew comes to the village to do some shooting. In midst of all the excitement,...