With more and more films portraying thieves as cool, is robbery being glorified?
Kochi: Thieves have been a hot favourite in Mollywood films for quite a long time, be it in Kalikkalam, Kallan Pavithran, Meeshamadhavan, Robin Hood or Romans. However, the industry has taken this love to the next level with a string of movies like Mr Fraud, Ithihasa and Once Upon A Time There Was A Kallan, with thieves as their central characters, ready to hit the theatres soon.
B. Unnikrishnan’s Mohanlal-starrer heist movie, Mr Fraud, is a much anticipated release this year. “Mr Fraud deals with the story of a scam and a very successful thief who is on his last heist, after which he wants to call it a day. He is a very up-to-date thief, who uses the most advanced technology available, and I think this is the first time such technology is being used in Mollywood. All the graphic work was done by Keralites who have been a part of many outsourced Hollywood projects,” says B. Unnikrishnan.
He adds that the love for thieves is nothing new for film audience. “Every film industry has a lot of movies with thieves as central characters; some of them show character transformation by the end, while others like Mankatha deals with thieves who have absolutely no regret. Mr Fraud is more of a grey person who is not 100 per cent good, but still undergoes a lot of emotional turmoil during a heist. This emotional world of a thief is also being explored in the movie.There are a couple of intense action sequences in the movie as well and Lal sir performed all these sequences without a duplicate.”
Anil Radhakrishnan’s upcoming venture Sapthamashree Thaskaraha, though still under the wraps, is also expected to be along the same lines. “The title of the movie is made up of three Sanskrit words that translate to Seven Gentlemen Thieves. My movie will not have any similarity or undertones of the Hollywood Ocean series. It will be a satire that will bring to the limelight a lot of things in the society we turn blind eyes to, or don’t pay attention to. Prithviraj will be playing the lead role in the movie. I can’t reveal more about the movie at the time,” says the director.
The two other such projects are Ithihasa by Binu S,. starring Shine Tom Chacko and Balu Varghese and Fazil Mohammed’s Sreenath Bhasi-starrer Once Upon A Time There Was A Kallan. With so many movies turning thieves into heroes, are we glorifying thieves? No, say those from the industry. “Even though the central characters in my movie are thieves, that part of their lives only forms a sub-plot in the films. Except for a couple of pick pocketing scenes in a song sequence, designed to introduce the characters, the concept is not much explored. So I don’t think it will glorify thieves in any manner. Even if that isn’t the case, I believe our audience is mature enough to separate movies from real life,” says Binu S..
Director Boban Samuel agrees and adds, “Even in my movie Romans, you can see that Biju Menon and Kunchacko Boban end up getting caught. So they don’t escape the consequences of their actions. We have to understand that there is a greater conflict here. A thief is a negative character, but he can commit good deeds and a police officer, who is supposed to be a good guy, can also commit crimes. So the good and bad differentiations are not that easy and are decided not by the character’s identity, but by their actions.
“A little grey shade, along with some comic elements that the thieves face, end up making such projects highly entertaining for the audience across all age groups.”
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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