Kuttavum Shikshayum Malayalam Movie
Kuttavum Shikshayum is a realistic police procedural drama about a group of cops who go to North India to catch some jewelry store thieves. Asif Ali's CI Sajan Philip is one of those officers. In an early sequence, we see Sajan shooting a young man to death as he tries to pelt cops with stones. Later, Sajan seems to be struggling with the bad memories of the incident. That is when he gets a jewelry burglary case in Kerala.
From the preliminary investigation, Sajan and his fellow officers learn that the people responsible for the heist are from a village in North India. Before they reach that village, they learn that it is a dangerous place that accounted for the death of cops in a similar mission. Sajan's superior officer warns him of the high risk involved in the operation and the possibility of little return from it. However, Sajan seems hellbent on catching the suspects and solving the case at any cost.
In Malayalam cinema, even if cops from Kerala reach a place outside the state for an investigation, they would meet at least one or two Malayalam-speaking officers there. Director Rajeev Ravi breaks away from that convention with authentic, Hindi-speaking characters in Kuttavum Shikshayum. As I said earlier, this is a realistic film, which means that the portions in North India are shot in that part of the country.
Like last year's Nayattu, we know what will happen at the end of Kuttavum Shikshayum as this is a procedural drama. The movie does not have much action or many nail-biting moments, but Rajeev Ravi brings a sense of authenticity to the proceedings. For instance, the families of the criminals include weapon-wielding women. It is shocking to see how those women try to protect their loved ones from law enforcement despite knowing that the men are criminals. In one terrific scene, Sajan and his team withdraw from the property of the criminals after seeing a group of women approach them with weapons.
Rajeev Ravi, his cinematographer Suresh Rajan as well as writers Sibi Thomas and Sreejith Divakaran make the audience walk the same path as these officers. At the same time, the makers show the mundane nature of police work, which involves one officer keeping an eye on a suspect in custody as the others sleep. After the long trip from Kerala to North India, the officers look as travel-weary as any ordinary person would. You can understand the lack of action in the movie until the end. Therefore, the film could have done with a bit more humor at the start and in the middle.
The performances are also quite good, with Asif Ali's performance being the standout. We are told that Sajan struggles with depression, but Asif Ali mostly underplays the emotions. While on one hand, this means that we do not fully realize the depth of Sajan's depression, on the other hand, it is perhaps in line with how the makers wanted to portray the character. Even an arc of redemption is shown as a usual part of a character coming to terms with the nature of his job.