July 4 Malayalam Movie
July 4, which comes from Joshiy, who has made many memorable blockbusters in the past, is a film that is well-made, but elicits some booing from the audience towards the end. The story begins in a jail. Ramachandran, a very agile police officer takes charge as the Jail Superintendent. He is given a brief about the jail and the prisoners by Narayanan Potti, who is the jailer there.
One day Ramachandran comes face to face with Gokul Das, one of the prisoners lodged there who is to be released soon, on July 4th. It is them revealed that the very reason why Ramachandran had taken charge of the jail is to meet Gokul Das, with whom he has some old scores to settle. From here unfurls, in flashback sequences, the story of Gokul Das.
As a child, Gokul Das had no one but his mother to call his own and lived in a street and worked in a cycle shop. When one day he is picked up by the police along with other boys from the street for some crime he has not committed, things go berserk in his life. His mother comes to get him released but is raped and killed by the police officer in charge of the station.
When Gokul comes out, he teams up with some other boys and takes revenge on the police officer, strangulating him. Then they flee to Mumbai, where they become criminals, constantly at clash with the cops. Things get too hot for them when a daring police officer takes charge, and they break up, with Gokul taking refuge in a colony at the house of one Gopalan, who is a kind-hearted taxi-driver. He gets close with Gopalan and his family, but soon the cops reach there too and in the tussle that follows, Gopalan is killed.
Gokul, who escapes from the cops, is filled with remorse. Later he takes Gopalan's family and leaves Mumbai, deciding to lead a good life. He works as a taxi driver at the Coimbatore airport. One day he meets a young girl Sreepriya at the airport. She later travels in his car. When Sreepriya urges him to speed, offering him more money, he obliges, only to hit an auto rickshaw carrying school children. Sreepriya catches another taxi and continues on her way. Gokul Das later turns up at Sreepriya's house asking for compensation. Her father offers him a job there as a driver and from here things take a new turn. Unexpected things are in store for Gokul Das and Sreepriya.
Dileep as Gokul Das is good and he does justice to his role. Notebook fame Roma as Sreepriya renders able support. Siddique as Ramachandran suits his role perfectly well. Devan as Sreepriya's father Viswanath is OK. Innocent as Narayanan Potti, Vijayaraghavan as Gopalan, Lakshmi Ramakrishnan as Sreepriya's mother, Cochin Haneefa as driver Abu etc do justice to their roles. All the others too fit well into their respective roles.
The technical support too is good. The songs in the film though are not impressive. The only song that is good is "Oru vaakum mindaathe…" To sum up, July 4 is a film that is well-made, but it doesn't impress us much, the main reason being that this is not what is expected out of a Dileep movie. People expect him to play a merry and lively character, and if that is done, they would be ready to accept action too from him. But here we have action and drama only, sans the usual Dileep kind of humour. And that does harm to the film. And similarly in the second half, matters seem to drag a bit. July 4 can be termed a well-made but average kind of film that won't come close to being a must-see.
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