‘Pani’ Review: Joju George’s Film is a Middling Revenge Drama in Real-time

DIRECTOR: Joju George
WRITER: Joju George
CAST: Joju George, Junaiz VP, Sagar Surya, Abhinaya, Abhaya Hiranmayi
LANGUAGE: Malayalam 

Say what you will about Joju George, the director, but he indeed has an original eye for blood-spattering violence. From the looks of it, we were all too quick to reduce him to this huggable older figure from movies like June (2019) or Madhuram (2021), so much so that you might be caught unawares of his access to the dark side. The scene from Pani that shows this involves two goons breaking and entering in their effort to attack a woman. This begins with a shot of broken glass on the floor as one of the two walks over the shards with footwear on. Later, when he pushes this woman to her back to silence her, George inserts another shot of this goon stepping on the woman with the piece of glass lodged in his shoe.

Even for tired eyes exposed to screen violence daily, this bit of twisted thinking can get right under your skin. This skill set, though, isn’t limited to his ability to write and stage gore (the ending is a mini-masterpiece in itself). He’s just as capable of writing characters who are evil personified. By creating sinister villains such as Don (Sagar Surya) and Siju (Junaiz VP), he has managed to make a film that will be remembered for the bad guys. This duo appears unhinged and unpredictable, operating in a state of mind that is beyond rationale or motivation. With the real-time pacing of the film and the frequency with which major events take place one after the other, you might be tempted to call them fools. Nevertheless, by the last hour, you catch yourself realising that they don’t operate on logic, affording them a beast-like mystique that makes them scarier than serial killers.

What’s surprising is how ineffective the same writer seems to be when he has to write ordinary people in everyday situations. Somewhere deep within this movie is the concept of a group of high-flying ex-gangsters who have given up their lives of crime. They seem to have moved past that phase, and we now see them live like a big, happy family enjoying moments of domestic bliss. They drink, eat, and even find time to sing together. So when the aforementioned bad guys enter this world, it’s time for their past selves to return and for George to think up some of the most violent scenes in Malayalam cinema.

You find many such concepts that get lost in translation, another one being the idea of how George’s character, Giri, owns the entire city. The film opens with a shot of Don and Siju sitting on the terrace, plotting to take over Thrissur one day. Just above them is a red neon sign with “Mangalath Tower” written on it. It’s a jarring first shot, especially when you know little. But, by the end of it, we get so many shots of Mangalath (Giri’s family name) written all around the city that it gives you the impression that this duo is trying to hide in what appears to be Giri’s kingdom. It’s as though the writer had wanted Thrissur to be central to every scene and character. However, these operate only as ideas without making an emotional impact.

For such ideas to work, it needed a director with greater control. Because what else is the last hour of Pani but a huge, city-wide chaos unleashed by two twenty-somethings? Just by their actions, we see the entire police force and the underworld being held hostage, bringing the city to a standstill. However, with weaker scenes connecting these high points, we seldom feel like a part of this chaos.

This lack of control is evident in the way he stages scenes that operate at a much slower pace. So, when Giri and his wife go on a romantic late-night drive after a party, it prepares us for some sort of tragedy to follow — the same manner in which there’s impending doom in every instance when the film slows down time as if to prepare you for another attack.

It’s the larger action set pieces that keep the film engaging. A chase sequence in the second half shows how George is better at shooting action than expressing emotions. The film comes alive in these scenes, especially when rage is the only emotion that matters. 

With sparks of original visual ideas and the ability to create compelling characters, George makes confident strides as a director. But with filmmaking that’s rough around the edges, and being the kind that reuses sexual assault merely as a tool to trigger the male ego, Pani is that not-so-rare action movie where punches land, but the plot doesn’t.