Grandmaster

Chandrashekhar is a police officer living alone in a dark city. He has put distance between himself and everyone; even with crime happening around him he avoids taking responsibility. Then a series of murders begins and the victims have not been chosen at random: the killer is following a certain order. Chandrashekhar reads his opponent's moves in advance like a chess master. Then once, only once, he is wrong. This Malayalam film, directed by B. Unnikrishnan, was adapted from a novel. Mohanlal has the lead and does not make the character a hero; the man is cold, distant and has not sorted out his own life either. The mould is the serial-killer police story, but it comes from a place where that genre was little worked in India at the time. A hundred and thirty minutes. The film's strongest quality is the killer's method; its weakest is that the explanation arrives and the tension ends there.