Ponman

Ajesh supplies gold on behalf of a jeweller. He provides the gold families need for weddings; after the ceremony it is taken back and the family pays in instalments. The work is risky because there is no security. There is a wedding on the coast at Kollam. Steffi is marrying and the family's gold is not enough. Ajesh supplies twenty five sovereigns. The wedding takes place. Then the payment falls due and nobody intends to pay. The groom Bruno is unemployed, quick tempered and has no intention of returning the gold. Ajesh goes to that house and cannot get out. Jothish Shankar directs; it is his first film as director. Basil Joseph plays Ajesh and Sajin Gopu plays Bruno; Lijomol Jose and Anand Manmadhan are in the cast. The language is Malayalam. The source is G. R. Indugopan's novel. It opened on 30 January 2025; it runs a hundred and twenty seven minutes and took more than eighteen crore at the box office. The matter it treats is wedding gold; how much gold is given at weddings in Kerala is a social obligation and the film shows it as a system of debt. Its form is black comedy; tension builds but the narrative does not overplay it. The coastal town and the fishing life are recorded in detail. The character Basil Joseph plays is not a hero; he is afraid, he bargains and he tries to run. The narrative gives Steffi a decision of her own and shifts the axis to her in the last section. Its limit is pace; the narrative is slow and the expectation of tension is met late. Who it is for: viewers who like Malayalam cinema and thrillers on social ground. Who it is not for: it is slow, the subject narrow, and the violence hard in the last section.