Pani Movie Review: Joju keeps audiences invested in this revenge thriller
Pani Movie Review: Critics Rating: 3.0 stars, click to give your rating/review,Joju George has managed to create an emotional core and cat-and-mouse action that keeps audiences e
Critic's Rating: 3.0/5
Story: When two young men unleash violence in town and on his family, Giri takes action in this cat-and-mouse revenge thriller
Review: Pani feels like a film from the ‘90s - and it seems a story that still works for some in 2024 - where men decide to handle a situation that has already been sorted out by a woman, only to make everything much much worse.
Debut writer-director Joju George plays Giri, who runs a prominent real estate company started with a close-knit unit of family and college friends. Together, they are part builders and part benign mafia in Thrissur. Just as the police talk about the rising goonda activity, two new, young bad boys, Don and Shiji covertly murder a landowner in the heart of the town. It shakes the police and Giri and his associates. But while they are on the lookout for the culprits, the duo move on to the next crime that forms the crux of the story.
Don takes a fancy to Giri’s wife, Gauri (Abhinaya), and feels her up when she is out shopping alone. She immediately slaps him and walks away, but Giri arrives and decides to take things into his own hands and beats them up publicly. The film is then a back of forth of violence, with the youngsters raping Gauri in retaliation for the insult and Giri out to get revenge for this and more.
The film has a mishmash of cliches from old Joshiy movies, like a hero who walks the fine line between good and bad (machismo), an IPS officer niece who back talks a taunting senior cop, and a traditional, but smart matriarch who appears as the pillar of the family.
While the writing isn’t strong, Joju has managed to create an emotional core and cat-and-mouse action that keeps audiences engaged and invested, and the characters are fairly well chalked out, with the actors - Alexander Prashant, Sujith Shankar and others sharing good chemistry. But there are gaps, such as the family involvement in the first murder, that are not filled. The ethos of Thrissur has been captured well.
With violence being the new hero of massy entertainers, Joju is probably giving audiences what they want and he succeeds fairly well in this.
Review: Pani feels like a film from the ‘90s - and it seems a story that still works for some in 2024 - where men decide to handle a situation that has already been sorted out by a woman, only to make everything much much worse.
Debut writer-director Joju George plays Giri, who runs a prominent real estate company started with a close-knit unit of family and college friends. Together, they are part builders and part benign mafia in Thrissur. Just as the police talk about the rising goonda activity, two new, young bad boys, Don and Shiji covertly murder a landowner in the heart of the town. It shakes the police and Giri and his associates. But while they are on the lookout for the culprits, the duo move on to the next crime that forms the crux of the story.
Don takes a fancy to Giri’s wife, Gauri (Abhinaya), and feels her up when she is out shopping alone. She immediately slaps him and walks away, but Giri arrives and decides to take things into his own hands and beats them up publicly. The film is then a back of forth of violence, with the youngsters raping Gauri in retaliation for the insult and Giri out to get revenge for this and more.
The film has a mishmash of cliches from old Joshiy movies, like a hero who walks the fine line between good and bad (machismo), an IPS officer niece who back talks a taunting senior cop, and a traditional, but smart matriarch who appears as the pillar of the family.
While the writing isn’t strong, Joju has managed to create an emotional core and cat-and-mouse action that keeps audiences engaged and invested, and the characters are fairly well chalked out, with the actors - Alexander Prashant, Sujith Shankar and others sharing good chemistry. But there are gaps, such as the family involvement in the first murder, that are not filled. The ethos of Thrissur has been captured well.
With violence being the new hero of massy entertainers, Joju is probably giving audiences what they want and he succeeds fairly well in this.
