Pani

Joju George's first feature as director, from 2024, is a Malayalam crime film in which he also takes the lead. The settled married life of a couple in Thrissur comes apart when two young men with criminal inclinations intrude, and the story settles into a line of revenge. The hard masculine roles George accumulated as an actor have soaked into his directing choices: violence is shown directly, at length and unadorned. It leans on the realist crime vein that has dominated recent Malayalam cinema, but the social analysis found in that vein's best work is thin here. How the film legitimises revenge, and the function the woman character serves in the story, became points of argument on release. Technically it is solid, with the sound design and the shooting of the night scenes standing out. Who it's for: viewers who follow Malayalam crime cinema and Joju George's work. Who it's not for: anyone unable to take extended scenes of sexual violence and torture, or who keeps a distance from the moral frame of revenge narratives.