Language: Malayalam
A cold case is defined as a crime that remains unresolved for a length of time and for which investigations have been put on hold indefinitely due to insufficient evidence, or a crime discovered much after it was committed. The latter circumstance is the starting point of director Tanu Balak’s Cold Case.
This new Malayalam film stars Prithviraj Sukumaran as ACP M Sathyajith in whose jurisdiction a human skull is fished out of a water body by an unsuspecting local. The remains have degraded over time and the police’s first challenge is to identify the dead person.
In another part of Thiruvananthapuram, the journalist Medha (Aditi Balan) shifts into a rented accommodation with her daughter and domestic help. Medha is divorcing her husband and is bracing herself for a custody battle over their child. She works with a TV channel on a programme dealing with paranormal occurrences. When she is compelled to probe the steady stream of scares in her own house, her inquiries throw up a link between Sathyajith’s case and the spooky presence in her home.
Cold Case is about the parallel investigations conducted by the two leads.
One of the nicer aspects of this film is that the director is clearly not intimidated by his superstar leading man and that Prithviraj himself has not used his clout to force his character into a position where he overpowers the narrative. When he is on screen in Cold Case, he is the centre of the proceedings but his arresting screen presence is not drummed up with low-angle shots and over-underlined music that are an inextricable part of old-style men-centric out-and-out commercial Malayalam cinema.
Prithviraj’s willingness to subordinate himself to the requirements of the screenplay is also evident from the fact that unlike in most mainstream Indian films featuring a major male star, here the female lead gets equal space, she is not in the story merely to give the hero someone to fall in love with and/or protect, she is not defined by her association with him and the writing does full justice to her role in the action.
As with the lovely Kannada film Pinki Elli? that has been selected for a string of film festivals since 2020, it is also good to see Sreenath V Nath’s script for Cold Case acknowledging divorce as a reality of present-day Indian society while not passing judgement on women for asserting their independence within marriage, demanding respect in a relationship and seeking freedom from one that is not working out.
(Aside: A Christian character in the film, we are told, “married a Hindu boy” but for some reason the subtitles at that point read “north Indian” instead of “Hindu”.)
(Minor spoiler ahead in this paragraph) How unconventional Cold Case is in the arena of commercial cinema is best explained by the fact that ultimately, neither lead is allocated a romantic partner or song. In fact, we are not drawn into Sathyajith’s personal life at all, beyond some time spent in his flat. (Spoiler alert ends)
The depth and refinement in these elements of the writing are not, unfortunately, carried into the rest of the film. Cold Case is let down by a self-conscious storytelling style when it deals with police procedures, awkwardly constructed dialogues assigned to Sathyajith when he is discussing the investigation with his colleagues, Prithviraj’s stilted delivery of those lines, a couple of coincidences in the detective work that ask for too much of a suspension of disbelief and an uninteresting antagonist. The conversations between Sathyajith and his fellow police personnel are often so elementary that it feels as if they were written as explainers for an audience presumed to be unaccustomed to crime thrillers. As for Sathyajith’s note-taking and the matter put up on the pin board in his home, they are both pointless.
Some scenes involving the ghostly being in Cold Case are genuinely unnerving, plus the immediate run-up to the discovery of who committed the crime and why are suspenseful, but the truth when uncovered leads us to a rather insipid criminal. Besides, a long-drawn-out effort to focus the viewers’ suspicion on a particular character becomes glaring to the point of being irritating. In the end too, the attempt to balance rationalism with belief in the supernatural is weak and predictable.
Aditi Balan is completely at ease before the camera and pleasant to watch. The supporting cast is largely unremarkable though, barring Suchitra Pillai who tries to be menacing as a visually challenged clairvoyant but turns out to be unwittingly funny instead. The scene in which she fervently chants “Mirror black, dark as night, grant me vision, give me sight” comes off looking almost ridiculous.
While on the subject of cringe-worthy lines, when will Malayalam directors stop using English and Hindi songs with embarrassingly poor lyrics in their films? I thought it was hard to top Love Action Drama in that department, but the number that plays over the closing credits in Cold Case is just as strange:
Bury all your lies
Down beneath the sky
Let it rot alive
Hidden and disguised
Tear it out
Let it bleed down from the sky
Far beyond the line
Confession is the crime
(Pause)
What?!
Criminal investigations are not Malayalam cinema’s forte but the team of Cold Case did have a solid reference point in the form of last year’s excellent Anjaam Paathiraa, which managed to be both clever and emotionally resonant. The recent Nayanthara-Kunchacko Boban starrer Nizhal too had more substance. Ezra (2017) starring Prithviraj himself could have served as a guide. Instead of evolving further, Cold Case takes a few steps back in this genre.
To its credit, this film is wisely controlled when it dips into paranormal horror clichés such as sudden loud sounds, ominous music and abrupt movement. The director deploys Girish Gangadharan’s restrained camerawork effectively for this purpose, and especially well in the climactic scene with the villain of the piece. Cold Case then is a reasonably engaging thriller. It had the potential to be so much more.
Rating: 2.5 (out of 5 stars)
Cold Case is streaming on Amazon Prime Video India.
by Anna MM Vetticad
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