Malayali director Aashiq Abu’s fourteenth film Rifle Club, now streaming on Netflix, is a bit of a conundrum. Let me explain. It holds you in thrall, grips you by your… err….jowl, rinses you, leaves you dry-mouthed. But at the end of it, you are left with little except a swankily designed thriller, in which the music pieces in the background seem to have been appended as an arresting afterthought.
Nothing flows in Rifle Club organically; every move feels over-designed. Not that there is anything wrong with a film that must have come alive on the drawing board. I wouldn’t be surprised if the director actually drew sketches of each scene before putting them on screen.
The film has a texture of richly designed visuals; they almost jump out of the screen like an over-friendly canine. This is both an upper and a bummer: the will to grab our attention is paramount; it hampers our connection with the proceedings. All the characters who are laid siege on in the rifle club lodged in a thick forest appear as a blur of activities: they are either loading guns, shooting men, or good-naturedly heckling the women in their midst.
At one point, a sassy maid(all the women are sassy: apparently, if you are a weapon-wielding woman, you have to behave like a man at a stag party) asks a young couple in hiding whether the two have had sex as yet. “It will help you get closer,” she offers helpfully.
I am sure the audience in the theatres must have fallen off their seats with laughter at this ‘Rukmani Rukmani Shaadi Ke Baad Kya Kya Hua’ moment.
The prologue of the film made me think of Applause Entertainment’s brilliant series Undekhi, where the patriarch’s grand birthday bash features a young couple’s musical performance. Something highly untoward happens and the patriarch, played by Anurag Kashyap, is soon gunning for the couple.
Kashyap spends most of the playing time in boxer shorts and nothing else. It is not a pleasant sight. The self-deprecatory humour , with references to Mexican shootouts, etc, work as aside, not as an intrinsic part of the narration.
Although Rifle Club is enjoyable as a shout-out shootout , it lacks…shall we say…finesse? It drowns in its eagerness to please.
