Pradhama Drishtiya Kuttakkar Review | A Mixed-Bag Intra-Police Thriller with an Interesting Premise

The idea of Pradhama Drishtiya Kuttakkar feels like what if a Drishyam scenario arises within the police department. Shahad’s new film is co-written by P. S. Subramanian, a police officer who has previously co-written another police movie, Heaven, starring Suraj Venjaramood. The premise of the film is pretty impressive, and how it ultimately stages the whole thing as a clash of investigative psyches also keeps us interested in the developments. But somewhere, the film’s dialogue-heavy nature to convey the drama and also the obvious placement of certain setups and setbacks made it a little bit generic here and there.

Aleena has joined the police force in the dying harness category, and she is her family’s hope. At one point during the routine checks, a mistake happens, and circumstances are totally against Aleena and her colleagues. Since they knew the system wouldn’t be kind to them, they decided to deal with the situation differently, and what we see here are the hurdles that come their way throughout this whole thing.

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A police officer being the co-writer of this film definitely helps the movie when it comes to creating certain nuances in the crime investigation part. What generally becomes an interval point in someone else’s imagination becomes the title reveal point for this movie. So that is actually helping Pradhama Drishtiya Kuttakkar to have a structure that is slightly different from what we would anticipate in a police crime thriller. But when it comes to building characters, the screenplay is not that imaginative. Everything they have attributed to each character lacks freshness, and you can guess how they would design a payoff using the backgrounds of each character.

The most fascinating bit in this idea is this clash of intelligence that happens between two major characters. From admiration to competition and eventually to rivalry, the evolution of that character equation is that exciting element in the story. While the setting up of that duel looks exciting in the earlier parts, as the story progresses, it enters this scenario where we know that the main character would have taken some precautionary measures to tackle this situation too. While some of it works very effectively, some intricate escape tactics feel a bit too much.

Compared to his other two films, which were on the lighter side of storytelling, the script itself is forcing Shahad to up his game. In writing, I felt the dialogues could have been better. The amount of exposition in the very first dialogue in the movie, from the Commissioner character itself, was somewhat off-putting. Roby Varghese Raj’s rustic visuals keep the story grounded. There are certain visual plays in the movie to establish the power of characters. For instance, initially we see Vijayaraghavan’s Harris Meeran in the co-driver seat of a police vehicle as the voice-over describes him as a great police officer, and towards the end, a similar visual is used for another character. Mujeeb Majeed’s choice of songs matches the emotions in the story, and it significantly contributes to the climax in creating that desired mood.

The film revolves primarily around Aleena, and Parvathy plays the fragile and strong beats of that character very convincingly on screen. Even when the script feels loud, she tries to give some subtlety to things through her performance. Mathew Thomas gets to do a character that is away from the kind of characters he has been doing for some time. In terms of screen time, it is not a significantly challenging role. But in certain sequences, like the one where his character talks about his love life, there is a slight tonal shift from the Mathew we have seen in the past. Siddharth Bharathan was memorable as ASI Das. Unnimaya Prasad gets a character that pretty much feels like one in her zone. Azees Nedumangadu’s character looked pretty intense, and they couldn’t fully use that character or performance. Vinay Forrt once again does a variation of a Vinay Forrt character. The Harris Meeran character is a veteran police officer who can identify the criminal mind at one glance. The kind of aura one would anticipate in such a prominent part was fully there in Vijayaraghavan’s performance, and both Vijayaraghavan and Parvathy knowing their characters adds to the drama we see in the final leg of the script.

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Pradhama Drishtiya Kuttakkar has a very interesting premise and solid performances. The drama being a tad too loud or the anticipation of the main character being a bit too unrealistic is not entirely affecting the rhythm of the movie, as the performances are able to make us empathize with the struggle and helplessness of the characters. It is an engaging thriller that couldn’t fully utilize its fresh premise of police being hunted by police.