Anwar

A police unit is after a plan for a bombing. They have one name: Anwar. They take the man and begin questioning him. But who he is and what he is after keeps changing as it proceeds; the narrative goes back and opens his past, and what we see does not match the first information. The officer running the investigation has a calculation of his own. Amal Neerad directs. Prithviraj Sukumaran takes the lead. The subject is investigations conducted in the name of counter terrorism and who gets marked in the process; the argument is current in India and the film enters it directly. Amal Neerad came from cinematography; his manner rests on slow motion, a dark palette and the aesthetic of advertising, and it is the same here. The structure is built on returns to the past and the information is deliberately given late; the viewer's sense of who is in the right changes several times. It belongs to the period when the understanding of genre changed in Malayalam cinema, and its manner was influential. Its limit is the script; the political frame is set up and not deepened, and the ending turns to an action resolution. Who it is for: viewers who like Malayalam thrillers and style driven crime films. Who it is not for: the violence is heavy, there is little depth of character, and the political matter is treated thinly.