Parts of Malayalam actor Joju George’s Pani (job in Malayalam, not water) are so powerful that you want more of that. Instead, you get large sections of namby-pamby filmmaking, hectoring the very forces that navigate the film somewhere close to meritoriousness, only to pull the proceedings into a morass of mediocrity.
Welcome to Thrissur the hamlet town in Kerala where, if we are to believe writer-director-actor Joju George, gangwars govern the city’s profile. If I were the Mayor of Thrissur I would worry about tourism. The film, powerful in parts, portrays Thrissur as infested with mobocracy and mayhem.
As the film opens with impressive ruggedness, two criminal drifters Don Sebas (Sagar Surya) and Siju (Junaiz VP) carry out an assassination in a crowded locality, pretend to be eyewitnesses to the crime, and then saunter into a supermarket where they misbehave with Gowri (Abhinaya) not knowing that she the lawfully wedded wife of one of the town’s biggest dons Giri (Joju George).
Giri beats them to a pulp at the supermarket. The two sleazy riders track the woman to her home and assault her. Have they raped her or molested her? There is a disturbing ambiguity to the heinous crime, as though to suggest that the shame and stigma attached to the act of sexual violence make it imperative to not discuss the crime in detail.
In fact the Gowri’s mother-in-law (Seema) consoles the traumatized woman, “They touched you. I know it was wrong and it has freaked you out. But you musn’t hold on to the incident.”
Mama Mia, what kind of moronic advice is that to a rape victim?!
The script suffers from an overloaded spine. It tries too hard to make the violence against Gowri’s assailants justifiable, showing Giri as absolutely bonkers over his wife as though the crime would be less reprehensible if the husband was less loving .Why must there be an emotional residue of anger for the hero to strike against criminals who assault his wife? Isn’t that what any man would do ?
The film perpetuates a revenge narrative. But doesn’t have its heart in it. There are too many digressive characters, all with criminal antecedents , muscling into the main crisis.Giri’s family forms a gauntlet of vendetta. But fails to exercise its power with panache.
After a point the hunt for Gowri’s attackers begins to seem redundant. If Giri and his associates are such powerful criminals why is it so difficult for them two nab two smalltime creepy criminals out to have perverse fun? Pani could have been so much better of Giri was an ordinary man seeking to snuff out his wife’s assailants. The power dynamics botch up the enormous tragedy of the rape…provided it was that.
