The con is on! Finally V K Prakash gets his due with a script that has some mettle within. However it is a straight lift off the Argentinean film Nueve Reinas, that had been a runaway hit as well as a film that had garnered much critical acclaim.
Marcos and Juan in Nueve Reinas assume Indian incarnations in the form of Jayasurya and Boban, who get to play a couple of swindlers who are on the streets to make some quick money. They are brothers in arms who outdo each other at every juncture and who having come across a whopper of an opportunity to be a millionaire in no time, go for it all tooth and nails.
The diversity of cons that the film hurls on your face is quite impressive. We have con after con, most of which leave an impression, provided they stick to their original. Any effort to move away and recreate an addition to the plot often looks disastrous.
I wouldn't really say the film has been inspired as such, since almost all sequences of the original film have been used per se in Gulumaal as well. Right from the opening scene that starts off with a con operation in a shopping mall, the way in which the girl gets involved and above everything else the run for money have been faithfully portrayed.
Things do change a bit. For instance, in Nueve Reinas, while the scampering is after some rare stamps called the Nine Queens, here the duo is in chase of a rare painting. Perhaps they felt that stamps might have sounded a bit too trivial for the audience down here.
There are attempts to localize the whole thing. So we have brilliant shots of Kochi randomly assembled to draw us right into the picture, and as the story progresses the cops who were last seen in the rumble jumble films of the 80's are brought back to the picture.
And we also have Suraj Venjaramoodu and Bijukuttan, members of the Anti Terrorist Squad, running after the pranksters, bumping into street poles, jumping into lakes and what not. A whole lot of slapstick for those who are actually interested.
One of the chief factors that makes Nueve Reinas an interesting film is the amazing camaraderie that its lead actors share. Gaston Pauls and Ricardo Darin are at it with a vengeance and the kind of energy that is pumped into the film, thanks to its lead actors is simply massive. Gulumaal could boast of the same liveliness as well, with Jayasurya and Boban complementing each other brilliantly well.
The songs o Gulumaal disappoint big time. It's more of cacophony that music as such, and it's a far cry from the usual V K Prakash films, when it comes to their picturisation as well.
Moving far ahead of Positive, V K Prakash might have a winner with Gulumaal. As for me, I am all eager to see his next work, hopefully with a better script that's much more original than Gulumaal is.