Showing posts with label whodunnit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label whodunnit. Show all posts

Thursday, 12 September 2024

I need informed consent!

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 from some kind of ailment one way or another - miscarriage, alopecia, deteriorating eyesight, memory loss and others. After looking at their cases, the doctor proposed they could be guinea pigs for the Pharma company they work for. In collaboration with their US partner, the Pharma company developed a virus. At the same time, they were creating an antidote. The good doctor suspects that the workers were fed with vaccine-laced drinks. Skin sampling is done to gauge their response to the vaccine when they fingerprint themselves and report to work. The fingerprint has an adequate DNA sample for the scientists to analyse their response to teh virus, codenamed Red Virus.

The ASP came up with a complicated plan how all the ~14 workers could have devised a devious plan to kill off their boss for vengeance, dodging the CCTV camera, locking the boss in the washroom, fuming the washroom with CO₂ gas, drowning his COPD-diseased lung, falling and succumbing to hypoxia. A clever plot! 

What happens next is the clincher. The protractor is apprehended, but instead, the ASP goes on a witch hunt against the Pharmaceutical company. He goes solo, in commando gear, to infiltrate their high-security plant in the interior to expose the company's shenanigans. The filmmakers decide to end the movie, paving the way for a sequel.

The building where yellow fever experiments were
conducted to prove that it is not transmitted using 
infected clothing (fomites). Camp Lazear.
The story of avoiding infections is the story of mankind. As in HG Wells 'The War of the Worlds', the only thing that protects the human species from total annihilation is their protection against common pathogens, not modern weapons. In the process of developing this immunity, many have to sacrifice. The story of Yellow Fever in the 1900s comes to mind.

Yellow Fever was a pressing problem in southern tropical areas of the USA. Although it was common in Cuba, periodically, epidemics broke out in the US. It was thought it was brought by bad air, poor sanitation or infected bodily fluids. It is said that a Confederate Officer tried to assassinate Lincoln by sending him old, dirty garments of patients who died of Yellow Fever, hoping that he would die of Yellow Fever. He obviously did not.

Dr Carlos Finlay of Cuba toyed with the idea that Yellow Fever was spread by mosquitoes, but he was laughed at. In 1900, Dr Walter Reed of the US Army introduced the idea of controlled studies. By using human volunteers who were willing to endure being bitten by mosquitoes for science, he proved that Yellow Fever was transmitted by certain mosquitoes. An army personnel, Jesse Lazear, died from Yellow Fever after contracting the hemorrhagic form of the disease. 

Now, would anybody make such a sacrifice in this age and time? Is it even legal? The Pharma is more than willing to conduct these experiments for us, all in the name of saving mankind. The reason, however, which is not even printed in the fine print, is that of monetary gains. Sure, they would pay off their guinea pigs handsomely. This is, however, just a drop in the ocean for these conglomerates. It would hardly jolt them.


Tuesday, 23 July 2024

A twister!

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 that all lead to good old storytelling and a satisfying end to a twisted comedic thriller, if there is such a genre. 

Spoiler alert: Maybe there is no such thing as a selfish gene. A person does not feel a buzz upon seeing someone with the shared DNA wronged. The skin does not quiver when a sibling is beaten up. If not, we would not have sibling rivalry. Neither would we have incest, postpartum violence or mass suicide of families. Empathy and caring are learned experiences. We all feel for our age-old friends and buddies in a closed community without sharing common DNA. Sharing Lucy’s ancient DNA does not count as a common ancestry, as perhaps all of mankind carries it. 

On a sobering note, we can see how creative some netizens can be. The main character in Maharaja, Vijay Sethupathi, in his 50th film appearance, is spotted with a bandaged left ear. As if like a fortunate stroke of serendipity (for the internet trolls, at least), on a platter, the news of Trump being shot in the ear became viral. Leave it to the ingenuity of the human mind, and the world has a picture of Vijay Sethupathi and Trump on the same poster as if promoting the film! 

In case viewers are wondering about the role of the snake in this movie. Fret no more. Snakes are notoriously known for not recognising their offspring and eating their own eggs. Helpful to understand the ending. In a world that sees mothers rushing helplessly into burning buildings, we also have mothers who feed their cubs to the wolves!


google.com, pub-8936739298367050, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

Thursday, 23 May 2024

The new wave whodunnit

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 sleuths or even crime drama addicts can sniff out the perpetrator at the word go. The storytellers decided to go somewhat meandering to trap this suspect. Of course, when this lead turned out to be a red herring, we knew it must be and turned out to be the second on the list anyway. Manoj Bajpai, who assumes the role of a disillusioned police investigator, keeps the plot together. There is a backstory to his frustration, which adds glitz to the whole affair.

As the first outing in Silence #2, Bajpai’s service in the particular unit, Special Crime Unit (SCU), is requested explicitly by VVIP. An important political figure is gunned down in a bar, and Bajpai is told to get to the bottom of it. Slowly, investigations take a tangent. It spins into a yarn of child prostitution and call-girl racket. The ending, however, turns out to be a whimper as the wrongdoer, after an elaborate execution of her whole crime, just admits to her heinous crimes so readily.

Still, it is an engaging one or two.




Friday, 3 November 2023

Brutally funny?

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 through by confining the filming area within a housing colony and the street surrounding it. The effects of movement restriction are hardly noticeable. Despite a few flaws here and there, the film is enjoyable overall. 

The other thing I learnt from this movie is about Febergé Eggs. Not many people realise that the Russian Empire has its own stories of gory and glory. With ferocious leaders like Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great (who was terrible), Peter III and Nicholas II, they have their skirmishes with the Tartars, indulgences and opulence. In the late 19th century, at the heights of their Empire, only rivalled by the British, royal jewellers made bejewelled Easter eggs for the Czars to amuse their spouses. 

About 69 such eggs were made around St Petersburg, and 52 surviving eggs are exhibited in museums worldwide. It has come to signify the heights of opulence and is worth a fortune. 

In this film, one such egg, on display in a museum in Calcutta, is stolen. While admiring the loot, the blooming thieves dropped the egg off their vehicle. The egg lands right smack into a lorry transporting thousands of chicken eggs. The truck heads to a warehouse. 

Their leader is livid. 

Anupama, a YouTuber, a wife and a mum, has too much time on her hands. Between caring for her family, she manages to find time to be a busybody to mind the businesses of her neighbours. 

After exposing one of the neighbour's husband's affairs, she gets into trouble with the residents' committee. Instead of thanking Anupama, the wife of the fornicator, sides with him when he fakes a heart attack. Anupama gets a warning to mind her own business. 

Curiosity got the better of her when she thought she saw another resident harming his wife. When Anupama goes to investigate, she faces the thief who lost the Feberge egg. He had tracked the egg to that unit. In a scuffle, Anupama kills the intruder. That starts the cat-and-mouse affair of hiding the body, the discovery of CCTV footage, the police, the leader of the thieves and the rush to find the elusive Fabergé Egg. Amongst all these, in the background, is an aloof pastor who has heard in his childhood of a particular egg handed to believers by Mother Mary at the time of Cruxification of the promise that Jesus will arise from death. 

Thursday, 27 April 2023

The press feeds the public what they want, scoops!

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 those who spin rumours just for the kick of it. They capture our sense of curiosity to yarn tales of lies and half-truths to spice up a tragedy. Maybe they are looking for clickbait. Little do they care how negatively it would affect the grieving or affected party.

In this age of breaking news, the press would go to all lengths, low down and dirty, to scoop out scandals to whet the viewer's appetites. There is a demand for these. As we increasingly become desensitised by gore and horror, the more demand for sensationalism. 

So when a pretty young thing is found strangulated at a film site, everyone gets curious. Everyone has their theory of what actually happened. The media is out to churn everything in the name of the public wanting to know. The police are on tenterhooks as pressure mounts to solve the case and find the perpetrator. In the meantime, the grieving party has to endure the hopelessness of losing a loved one, harassment of the press, accusatory fingers of the judging eyes and exposure of family wrongdoings that were kept under wraps for so long. The victim and her family are trialled in media from the public lens. In the meantime, fiction writers start their storytelling trade under the guise of wanting to discover the truth. At the same time, they do not fail to mention that their story is based on actual events. Just how much it is related to true events is where it gets blurred.

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Saturday, 20 August 2022

A wounded mother

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, the villagers also witness a couple of murders. Ms Marple, with the help of her 'favourite' nephew from Scotland Yard, gets to the bottom of it all.

The movie saw the appearance of many stalwarts of yesteryears in the twilight of their careers. It saw Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Tony Curtis and Kim Novak. Angela Lansbury was there as Ms Marple. Lansbury's career was, of course, still flying high, and she went on to complete 12 seasons of 'Murder, She wrote' from 1984 to 1996.

“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”*