Innale Vare Review: Asif Ali starrer boasts of promising character ideas coupled with lackluster execution

Director: Jis Joy 

Star Cast: Asif Ali, Nimisha Sajayan and Anthony Varghese.

Streaming Platform: SonyLiv 

Rating: 2.5/5

Review by: Arjun Menon

The film in between all its quirks still does not get the texture right as it often wanders between the duality of being a deep-running commentary on the adversity of celebrity life or the cold-blooded stream of an all-out revenge drama, and finally ends up taking up bits of all mediocre parts. This feels wrong for all the reasons as we can literally feel the innate goodness of these characters constantly engaged with the externally imposed darkness that never lets itself be taken too seriously, at least in Jis Joys' view of the world.

The name Jis Joy is a regular in Malayalee meme pages and cinema groups for his unapologetic, candy floss feel-good entertainers, which are often accused of being too goodhearted and wishy washy for its own good. He has been often winked at by many as the very last practitioners of the hyper feel good drama sub-genre in Malayalam cinema, now mostly dominated by brooding thrillers and sparsely minimalistic content. The film was in the news right from the time of its first official poster release with the director declaring that he has finally straying away from his usual flourishes by going for a snappy thriller, devoid of any of his directing trademarks. These staples of his brand of cinema mostly include unbelievably good-natured protagonists dead set to help everyone around him, a roaster of veteran actress mouthing lines oozing the power of ultimate human kindness.

Innale Vare is a mostly low-key exercise in palette cleansing by a director bowed down by his own signature intricacies, a product of recurring elements that often prevent any genuine surprises in the way his filmmaking sensibilities tweaks to adapt to a new kind of story world. This means that eventually, the storytelling on display for lack of a better analogy wants to have the cake and eat it too- like sacrificing emotional investment at the altar of sentimentality. The film is designed as a morality tale of a cocky, reckless superstar Aadhi Shankar (Asif Ali), and his eventual comeuppance for all his misgivings as an entitled entity. The writing peels the young superstar with the heft of a been there done that scenario involving the struggling producer of a shelved film who requests the hero to dub for the few remaining bits and the headstrong hero, repelled at the idea of reviving, what seems to him an “outdated film” that won’t make any difference as it’s a good four years too late.

This setup in the early half is used as a convenient plotting device to guide the narrative later on when the stakes keep mounting on each other as the film progresses. The film despite its best efforts in window dressing its downright archaic thrills ends up being a mere aesthetic continuation of the director's earlier irresistibly talky, saccharine-laced narratives, camouflaged within the texture of a routine run of the mill survival thriller template, followed to the tee. The film is designed as an ego check for a megalomaniac, who is put through the burner only to seek redemption for his innate dorkiness and lifestyle choices, told often times confusingly as a revenge drama packed within the hero’s inward journey more than anything else.

Things seem to go downhill for the superstar who has just stepped foot into new waters by funding and starring in an unusual sci-fi thriller, which proves to be a major contrivance in his declining filmography, resulting in huge losses and piling up debts. The reason for the underperformance is quoted by his private manager as the unwelcoming nature of audiences towards new experiments in their ready staple of cinema. This throwaway reference to this sudden makeover of the superstar also seems like a meta commentary by the director on his attempt at cracking an unusual story world different from the sure shot beats of his usual style of cinema, a huge roll of the cinematic dice.

Asif Ali holds the whole vanity project in check with his restless demeanor and sophisticated aloofness, which lends to the headspace of the character lost in his own world of luxury and misconceptions. The entry of two seemingly strange players elevates the stakes which are further accentuated by a dreadful night of revelations, that kicks the movie towards its second half. At this point on, the movie morphs from the pulpy character study of a headstrong matinee idol to a formulaic survival thriller set within a single location, testing the adversity of the superstar, having the worst night of his life yet. Nimisha Sajayan and Anthony Varghese look largely unconvincing in their respective parts, as the actors never quite attest to the wild, sardonic pitch of the writing with their largely one note turns. 

The middle act is left with pretty much the stereotypes that we associate with the classic beats of the survival thriller like the unassuming neighbors, the highly aloof security guard, and a clueless, almost nonexistent police force is utilized in a series of sequences that are pretty routine with nothing particularly clever in its ideation or execution excepts for a few scenes towards the end. The cinematography often times lends the gritty, hyper stylized look to the story even though the writing falls flat and resorts to the endless possibilities of mining cinematic clichés one after the other. 

The film is mapped out as a confused and toned-down version of the famous Jis Joy formulae of a candy floss entertainer, disguised rather oddly within the confines of a regular captive thriller. 

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