Mukundan Unni & associates – movie review

I would’ve skipped this movie if not for a WA status screenshot message, mentioning something funny about the movie. The lead character resembling a doctor friend of mine was another reason. Few minutes into the movie, it was clear that the hero was the villain in the story, and it is going to make a mockery of the possible positive/good characters. But the extent at which it is dealt in the movie is possibly a trendsetter for upcoming ones!! The hero is unabashedly selfish and is motivated enough to kill anyone from achieving his goal of becoming a successful lawyer. He is openly jealous of his fellow lawyers and schemes of ways to pull them down or outwit them whenever they get close to success or potential successful cases. He even tries to undercut the lawyer under whom he assists as junior, who kicks him out when he gets to know about his deceit. He soon lands up in a scheme, where he witnesses another lawyer who has made “ambulance chasing cases” into a well-oiled machine for minting money. His scheme of things including a widespread corruption net involving every pillar of the social system, right from police to doctors to ambulance drivers to insurance company. The hero(!!) tries to mimic the setup and doesn’t taste immediate success. But as he quotes to himself, his hard work-perseverance-sincerity, pays eventually where he opens a rival setup to the original scamster lawyer. When that man tries to cut the hero down to his knees, our hero puts a venomous snake in the car of the other lawyer resulting in his “accidental” death. The rest of the movie is about, how he produces one scheme after another, one ploy after another and several mechanisms of faking certificates and seals, bribing everyone under the sun, to stake claim to the throne of prosperity. Towards the climax comes an upright officer, who almost manages to nab the hero red handed, only for the fate to intervene and enable our hero to escape. The upright officer, for being the odd one out in such a scruple less setup, gets transferred to the proverbial “thanni illa kaadu” kind of a place. The movie ends with the hero becoming the chairperson of the very hospital where he started his blooming career. There is a strong setup of characters who support him in his shady deals. The heroine, who helps the hero in sharing key information on possible clients, eventually marries him for the simple reason that, he is a “pozhakka therinja aalu” as compared to the son of the hospital dean, who encourages her to take up PSC exam as he falsely believes that is her dream. In fact, that lady is openly and shamelessly self-centric in proclaiming how she wants to live her life, irrespective of how that life is supported financially. The only other good soul, the lady assistant who is a batchmate of the hero, visits the grand celebration of the hero becoming the chairperson. When questioned why she can’t be successful like the hero, she replies she is content with what she has and will wait for karma to settle score with the hero. For which the wife of the hero coolly replies, till the time karma takes care, they will continue their merry way and the movie ends. 

I don’t expect commercial entertainers to preach dharmic thoughts and honest ways of life. There are already several holy books and teachers for such propaganda. But the reach and scale of these movies is exponentially high and when presented in a palatable manner, it spawns many such similar story lines where each one tries to out do the other in showing the multitude of ways in which a bad person comes out successful in the end. Till a while back, “Crime doesn’t pay” used to be the tag line and it has been steadfastly replaced with “only crime pays nowadays”!! Just like how heroes wanted to play “anti-hero” kind of characters that has eventually led to them playing badass villains for the full run time, hopefully they should get bored with all this negativity and come back to try out positive characters at least occasionally!! With a society where morality is a hard sell even at kids level, such kind of movies, where a hero trying to kill someone is accompanied by comic kind of background music, as if the tune will dilute the heinousness of the act is sadly and seriously silly. Malayalam movies that are known for their unique and decent content being inflicted by this virus is a worrying trend.