Inayathalam movie review: Lacks coherent narration, tauter screenplay would've helped

Directors: Shankar - Suresh

Cast: Ganesh Venkatraman, Swetha Menon, Erode Mahesh, Delhi Ganesh

Last week we saw the film Lens deal with topics such as digital voyeurism, the lust for prurience in the digital world and its consequences. Inayathalam by debutant directors’ duo Shankar – Suresh also has a similar idea – about the crimes that take place through Internet and social media and how people are obsessed with it.

A series of murders takes place that is beamed live on an anonymous website. And the murder is designed in such a way that the death is correlated to the number of hits (public viewing). A straightforward cop Ganesh (Ganesh Venkatram), and two cyber crime officers Helen (Swetha Menon), and Ganapathy (Erode Mahesh), a technical expert are assigned with the job of finding the culprit. The first victim is a general manager (Delhi Ganesh) of a top firm and second being a media person (Adam). Even as the crew of sleuths goes clueless of the hi-tech crime on digital space, Ganapathy who is on suspension, becomes the third target. Whether they find out the culprit forms the rest.

Ganesh fits the role well and tried to give his best although the action sequences seemed very staged. Swetha Menon looks pretty, but lacks the aggressiveness required for such a role. Erode Mahesh is just about adequate. Though the intentions of the directors are good, the problem with the film is that it lacks coherent narration. The characters are underdeveloped and the pace suffers in many places. A tauter screenplay would have helped. Even when the murderer (Sukanya in a negative role) was exposed, the surprise element gets lost as the backstory of her heinous acts weren’t convincing. Arrol Corelli does his bit with his background score which is at times loud.