'Thudarum' review: Mohanlal delivers one of his most emotionally charged roles in director Tharun Moorthy's hat-trick outing

The mood shift in Tharun Moorthy's films is quite interesting. Also interesting is the way he markets them. This filmmaker has always been cautious about revealing the true nature of his stories in the trailers. He knows how to mislead the audience. This approach doesn't work with every film/filmmaker. Tharun's way of doing this, however, is most admirable. He is only two films old, and he has surprised us both times — be it Operation Java or Saudi Vellakka, Tharun's way of getting us invested in his storytelling was different in each.

With Thudarum, you go in expecting it to be a certain kind of film, but then you realise that he is not here to give you that, but something else. And that something else is mostly making you uncomfortable. And I don't mean this in a bad way. Make no mistake: Thudarum was made to please Mohanlal fans, and he delivers. I would even go so far as to say that Thudarum makes up for the disappointment caused to some by L2: Empuraan. Now, I'm wondering how to review a film like this, because, what we saw in the trailer was just a tiny portion of the film. A lot of things happen in the film that Tharun didn't show in the trailer.

Without giving anything away, when the film's title first appears, what we see is a simple, unblemished font. But when the title reappears later instead of the usual 'interval' card, it has a couple of bloodstains. Before I went into the film, I was a bit apprehensive as I assumed Tharun made a saccharine-loaded, full-fledged feel-good entertainer. I assumed this would be his attempt at doing a Sathyan Anthikad-style family drama with plenty of laughs. Look, we do get those moments but those are all placed in, maybe, the first 30 minutes. The subsequent developments hit you like a sledgehammer — the subsequent developments get progressively darker. I wouldn't say it's as dark as the recent Officer on Duty, starring Kunchacko Boban, but it comes close.

But even when the film's atmosphere gets thicker and heavier with menace, maybe enough to recall one of those intense Korean thrillers, Tharun doesn't forget to inject us with doses of catharsis when we most need it. After all, Mohanlal's character, Shanmugham, is a cab driver who also happens to be a former... stuntman. But Tharun gives us this information right in the beginning, instead of the oft-repeated and ineffectively cliched way of throwing us a surprise and then telling us, "You know what? He once used to be a badass!" In so doing, Tharun scores one goal after another when we least expect him to.

And as I said earlier, Tharun is unafraid to dole out one discomforting moment after another. He puts the characters of Mohanlal, Shobana, and a few others through some emotionally devastating circumstances. But he also incorporates enough meta moments and callbacks to earlier Mohanlal films — both the good and the bad ones — to make the overall experience more palatable. For instance, in one scene, Shobana utters two of Mohanlal's most trolled dialogues while he is experiencing a crisis. The same goes for the production design. In one shot, we see that the nursery run by Shobana is named 'Pavithram'. In another, we see that the name of the street they live in is 'Vietnam' Nagar. And there is one particularly trying situation in a police station that reminds you of Mohanlal's 1989 filmVaravelpu. There's more, but I don't intend to spoil it for those who haven't seen the film yet. All I'm saying, for now, is that once Thudarum ends, the cumulative feeling we get is that of having watched a Sibi Malayil film more than a Sathyan Anthikad film.

Film: Thudarum

Director: Tharun Moorthy

Cast: Mohanlal, Shobana, Binu Pappu, Maniyanpillai Raju

Rating: 3.5/5

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