Thankam

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!

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 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.

I enjoyed every second of this movie and loved the screenplay. The highlight of the movie is its climax and people are criticizing it because they never expected that. That's a classy story and screenplay for you, I would say.

It would have been great if the director gave some time to explain a few concepts regarding the occupation the main characters were doing, many people didn't get it at first instance and I also didn't understand what they were doing. Rather than that, I would say this is one of the best movies of 2023. Biju Menon and Vineeth played their roles nicely but the highlight is the Maharashtrian Girish Kulkarni, I have no words to explain his acting. I think it's time to rewatch the movie again.

Thankam (2023) : Brief Review -

A cowardly crime drama, but that's the life of some middle-class people who have more courage than rich people. Thankam is a crime drama, a murder mystery actually, with a cowardice motive revealed in the climax, but you don't know, or maybe you know, that's the life of some people. Some lower- and middle-class people try too hard throughout their whole lives but still can't make enough money. Some carry debts for a long time and then bury themselves underneath that load. Thankam is about that pressure, that load, and how one middle-class man finds a getaway through it. The point isn't reasonable enough, but like I said, it's life for some people, so it's damn realistic for that chunk of people. Society may call them cowards and losers, but they have the courage to take their lives. Will any rich man have enough courage to do so? I know, that doesn't make any sense. Why would any rich man have to take his life when he has everything in his life? That's why this film would look illogical to a certain section of people, and that's perfectly alright. It deserves some hate for the point that it tries to make, as it might harm the entire point of living life and fighting for it. The film is about two gold brokers, Muthu and Kannan, trying to make more money than they need for a subpar life. They travel to Mumbai for a gold deal, and after that, Kannan disappears. The police have a tough time finding Kannan's whereabouts and what lies ahead of them. Since it's a murder mystery, I don't think I should give away any more plot details. The screenplay is a bit slow in the first half, and then the second half is somewhat pacy. Its length is a major issue here, but the performances of Biju, Vineeth, Aparna, and Girish Kulkarni have recovered a lot of losses here. The key factor is missing in Saheed Arafath's direction, but somewhere down the line, you are bound to feel a little sentimental about the whole thing even if you don't like it.

RATING - 6/10*

By - #samthebestest.