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.

Directed by Saheed Arafath starring Vineeth Sreenivasan, Biju Menon , Girish Kulkarni in lead role.

A gripping thriller with an unexpected twist.

The story tells us about the people in on in the gold business, their stress and strain in executing & what unintentional wrong steps they took which change their life, Thankam displays that grey area of the glitter business which is really not that glittery.

When it comes to performance, Vineeth Sreenivasan had done his best. He convincingly performed the character of Kannan the gold agent. His character represents that section of people in this glittery business falls into the traps which proves to be fatal for them. At one point we fells he is a con man but at the end we feel a sympathy towards that character.

Biju Menon alias Mathew had beautifully performed. His naive attitude, his innocence, his dialogue delivery in such situations where it is serious but when he delivers in his style, moment of laughter comes up.

Girish Kulkarni as shrewd police officer. An another notable performance. A perfect casting for the police officer.

Aparna Balamurali doesn't have much to deliver and in her limited presence had give an Ok performance. It was better to cast a heroine who is a beginner so that minimality of the screen presence and the artist carrying that character will be balanced as today especially post the national award scenario, public will expect more from Aparna Balamurali rather than being portrayed as a cameo heroine role.

Song restricted to 1 was an another positive factor.

Locations were good enough.

A crime thriller which takes like a slow train stopping at all stations wherein one by one a mystery is unlocked thereby not loosing the interest of the audience to watch till the end.

Overall Thankam ( Gold ) reminds us of one thing " All that glitters are not gold"

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.

It falls under a good film with proper script and screenplay to lead from scene to another.

No time wasting scenes, songs or fights Every charecter had their scenes naturally performed with realistic tone as in our real lives, as in most Malayalam movies.

Some logistic questions do come into mind?

How is that they travel from Thrissur to Coimbatore and then to Muthupet near Thiruvarur in coastal Tamilnadu and return back to Coimbatore on same night?! Geographically, this seems impossible even with highways and nil traffic!

The ending was very dampened and abrupt which made a movie that could be 'best' to score 'just good'!

What happened to the 2 kilo gold, is a million dollar unanswered question in the movie?! If anyone got a clue about this, please update!