Thankam

The most unprecedented aspect of Thankam is its distinct look at gold riders. Shyam Pushkaran's screenplay meticulously approaches its key characters Muthu (Biju Menon), Kannan (Vineeth Sreenivasan), and Jayant Sakhalkar (Girish Kulkarni), pulling you into their realistically gritty world with ease. The proceedings are completely engaging (up until the climax), with Bijibal's score, Kiran Das' cuts, and Gautham Sankar's cinematography serving their purposes well. Little revelations lead to bigger ones, and there are facets to Kannan that we get to know in bits and pieces. I wish Aparna Balamurali's character (Kannan's wife) had more meat to add to the plot, but since revelations surrounding Kannan are gradual, her character appears under-written.

Muthu and Bejoy (a superb Vineeth Thattil) take on the audience perspective, eager to find answers and getting perplexed at how sophisticated things are, beyond what they can imagine. Their internal banter also keeps things a bit light, in an otherwise cynical setup. Girish Kulkarni is fantastic, and the language barriers involved when a team of cops from Maharashtra investigate the case of a missing Malayali in Tamil Nadu are poignantly presented. He also gets at least one unexpectedly massy scene where a change of tone and posture in a conversation with a senior Tamil cop gets the job done faster. Same goes for the "poda koppe!" at the end. The climax, while not weak from a writing perspective, comes across as a bit of a dampener as all hopes of a bigger, more shocking twist are dashed.

Malayalam movie Thankam starring Biju Menon, Vineeth Sreenivasan , Girish Kulkarni etc is a good crime drama written by the great Shyam Pushkaran. Movie produced by Bhavana Studios who made some great movies like Joji, Kumbalangi Nights etc . THANKAM is a story of 2 men involved in Gold business in Trissur and they travel to mumbai for gold exchange it leads to crime investigation where the police who is played by the great Girish Kulkarni travels to different states to catch the culprit and tries to resolve the case.

Top notch performance by Vineeth and Biju Menon. It's Girish Kulkarni who steals the show . He plays this shrewd police officer and has given his best performance.

Good to see the makers have used all languages like hindi, marathi, English, tamil and malayalam instead of forcing to speak malayalam to non mallu actors like Girish Kulkarni and some other tamil actors.

It's a slow crime drama with a twist in the climax. The writer smartly kept the climax as open ended so that people can have different perspectives to it.. Watch it to know better #BhavanaStudios #VineethSreenivasan #shyampushkaran #BijuMenon #GirishKulkarni #Unnimaya.

The first half of the film was highly involving and the making deserves an huge appreciation. The wonderful job on the Music by Bijipal helped as well.

I found the second half to be predictable and the story telling lost its pace which it gathered in the first half. Few shorts could have been avoided or bettered.

All the casting were perfect. The character done by Biju Menon, Muth was my personal favourite. But at the end of the day you will be thinking about Vineeth's character, Kannan. Thanks to Girish Kulkarni in trusting Working Class Heros, done amazingly well in the role of police officer. Vineeth Thattil's character was the joker in the pack, helped in the narration of the story, had also done an excellent job.

Highly recommended to watch in theatres!

RATED 7/10 Language: Malayalam Source: Amazon Prime

The movie has quite different and less travelled backdrop and characters are fresh for this story. First twenty minutes, it was very difficult to follow the movie, later its become slow burner and hooked to the murder investigation.

The story flow and how it travel across different locations and revealing the different layers of the characters nicely. The climax is bit unexpected and looks more abrupt.

The best part is that all the characters had the grey shade in this story but still good human being. Decent watch and tune for the slow narration.

Watched this one with my family today. This was an adult movie in a way. After an indifferent start, the film becomes so damn gripping. I really enjoyed it. It was a great police procedural. Awesome supporting cast - especially Vineeth Thattil (Kadan Benny Chettan in Angamaly Diaries), Gireesh Kulkarni and Jain Andrews, the actor who played Alex. After a slightly slow and indifferent start, the film suddenly grips you in a way only the best police procedurals can. Writer Shyam Pushkaran throws in a couple of mass scenes towards the end. Background score was jarring on some occasions. But this is a really terrific movie man. Great debut for director Saheed Arafat.

(8/10)