Malayalam cinema’s Hitchcock, Jeetu Joseph, who gave us one of the coolest franchise thrillers Drishyam, seems to flounder when doing non-Drishyam whydunnits. Mirage is way more refined and involving than his last four thrillers, suspense or otherwise—namely 12th Man, Kooman, Neru and Nunakkuzhi—but still not cool enough to prove that Jeetu can do a non-Drishyam just as well.
Not that the film is lacking in dramatic tension. The fact that the plot is shot on real locations rather than studio sets augments its atmospheric astuteness. However, Jeetu and his co-writer (Srinivasan Abrol) pile on the dramatic twists and turns so thickly, it eventually feels highly manipulative, compromised and worse, unconvincing.
By the time we arrived at the final corkscrew twist, I was actually laughing, of course at the edge of my seat.
India’s Hitchcock, Jeetu Joseph, needs to unwind. He seems more tense about clinging to our attention than the characters are about seeming innocent when they are guilty as hell.
Relying on capable actors always helps. Asif Ali and Aparna Balamurali are among the finest Malayali actors in the business today. They are gifted enough to carry even deadlog, which this piece of smart but smothered suspenser is not.
Some portions, especially a shootout outside a café and scenes involving a “celebrity goon” (played menacingly by Sampath Raj), are so gripping, you wish the momentum wouldn’t flag. Alas, the uneven pace does the suspense in. It is like watching a potential cliffhanger topple over the cliff.
Initially, the tension surrounding the disappearance of Abhirami’s boyfriend/fiancé Kiran (Hakeem Shajahan) is knitted nimbly into the narrative. From there, it is downhill. Sadly, from Costa Gavras the storytelling plunges to Ramsay Brothers.
The climax has Abhirami (Aparna Balamurali) being beaten brutally by the villain. This is not the first time the actress is roughed up by her adversary. In Rudhiram, the actress was treated worse. If getting brutally roughed up by a man is a sign of gender equality, then Aparna is a true feminist.
She does well when given space to grow beyond the writers’ anxieties. Asif Ali as Aswin Kumar, an online investigative journalist helping Abhirami to escape her assailants, blends a sense of fun with an edge of sinisterness. He proves a solid prop for Jeethu Joseph’s storytelling even when it falls into shallow ditches. While the character’s vulnerability works to the script’s advantage, Aswin soon starts beating up multiple goons and behaving more like Ethan Hawke than Clark Kent.
A lot of conversation between the characters happens while they are travelling in speeding cars (shot in budget-friendly studios) looking for clues to a mystery that loses its relevance rapidly in the war of nerves between the plot and its purpose.
Also Read: Greater Kalesh review: A cuddlesome take on what makes a family, a family
