'Varavu' Movie Review: Joju Joseph Is Clueless In This Gratingly Old-School Action Drama

If Shaji Kailas began his career today, he would wrestle with the idea of starting out as a celebrated food vlogger. Even when he’s setting up major action sequences, he seems obsessed with the idea of staging confrontation around food. Speaking strictly of its novelty, this could be something as inane as framing an intro shot while placing a hot, steaming glass of lemon tea at the foreground. But the ideas that cracked me up in his new film were the subtle innuendos he’s packed in to trigger a conflict. 

Take the instance of five masked assassins walking into a small restaurant with the intention of creating trouble. One of them looks at the waitress and shadily asks if she will give him some “buns and milk”. It’s meant to sound as off as it does, but the dialogue delivery of the actor makes it sound crass. When the film’s hero, Paulson (Joju George trying his best), walks in upon hearing this, he sends the bad guy flying with a kick to his groin. As he flies across the screen, we see two eggs flying with the same velocity, landing at the centre of a frying pan. A second later, Paulson slashes a sword across another bad guy and instead of zooming in on the damage this causes, we cut to a shot of a banana that gets sliced into two. 

These scenes amuse but not because they are meant to be a silly, but to set the stage for its mass hero. There’s an annoying amount of self-seriousness that urges us to believe that these food shots have been designed to create madness in the movie theatre. This is then taken several steps further when Shaji Kailas relies obsessively on a stylistic choice he was once the king of—his dizzying camera movements. In Varavu, the absurd camera movements are pushed to such an extent that we being to feel nauseous. In a car chase set entirely in the deep forest, the director opts to place one shot after another at the top, creating the effect that we’re watching the entire chase from a set of drones. The camera moves up, down, sideways and upside down to add to the urgency of this chase. But by the end of it, we want the film to settle down and just say what it wants to without this gimmickry. 

But even this is no solution in such a film because every plot point is told from a broad, generic standpoint. Why does Paulson’s brother go missing? Because he falls in love with a rich bad guy’s daughter. Why does Paulson have to go to jail? Because a corrupt police officer frames him. Why does the town’s folk continue to support Paulson in all his missions? Because he appears to be their saviour. Why are there so many low-angle shots Paulson’s white briefs, especially when he’s wearing a veshti? This alone, the film has no answer for. 

One of the two things that makes the film slightly watchable is its timeline, which begins and ends within the ten days Paulson is allowed be on parole as he serves a life sentence. Another fun element is how the corrupt officer played by Baburaj is replaced by a senior officer, this time being played by his wife Vani Viswanath. Both these actors are signature additions in a film directed by Shaji Kailas, but Vani’s accent, trying to mix Malayalam with Telugu, results in one of the silliest portrayals by an actor that deserved so much more. As the film struggles to make its point in an attempt to create the feel of an old '90s potboiler, we’re left hoping that the next big action block doesn’t begin with another low-angle shot of Joju flashing.