Najeem Koya’s ‘Kaly’ aspires to be testosterone fuelled. It however turns out to be little more than an expendable diversion; one that is so caught up with its own indulgences, that it rarely hits a mark or scores a point in the course of its entire running time of an unbelievably long one hundred and sixty three minutes!
Najeem Koya’s ‘Kaly’ aspires to be testosterone fuelled. It however turns out to be little more than an expendable diversion; one that is so caught up with its own indulgences, that it rarely hits a mark or scores a point in the course of its entire running time of an unbelievably long one hundred and sixty three minutes!
A bunch of young boys, (Shebin Benson, Shalu Rahim, Indy Pallassery, Anil K Reji, Siraj and Suhaid Kukku) have taken it to stealing with a passion, and when one of them suggests that they pay a late night visit to a well-heeled part of the city, where he has spotted a few villa apartments that seem like an easy target, the rest of them are quick to agree. Off they go, in the dead of the night, and just as they are about to make away with the loot, the lights comes on out of the blue, that send the boys scampering for their lives.
A group of affluent middle aged men, (Shammi Thilakan, Baburaj, Tini Tom, V K Baiju, Baiju Ezhupunna, Balaji Sharma and Alexander Prasanth) who are residents of the place, set out in hot pursuit of the boys who are caught on the CCTV cameras, and manage to corner one of them. An unexpected fling by a golf club splatters blood all over the place, and the men realizing that the boy is dead, seeks help from Circle Inspector Thilakan (Joju George) to brush it all under the carpet.
‘Kaly’ lets its protagonists loose on a recognizable plane, where they make do with petty thefts, walking into stores and sneaking out with an extra Tshirt or two worn beneath a hoodie sweatshirt, cozying up with girls pretending to be some rich brat who is on a break from international travel, or at worse, grabbing some women’s underwear off balconies or greedily ogling at the glimpse of a bra of a girl that one of them had managed to sweep off her feet. Well, you get the picture.
The funniest bit is the comparison between crimes that the film offers; there is unintentional murder on one side and simple theft on the other, and even as it makes the rich man apologize for having flung his club at someone who apparently seemed a thief, it also conveniently sweeps up the boys’ deeds and lets go of it, as if it’s okay to thieve, as long as it’s a pair of shoes or a bicycle or maybe err…some undergarments.
The logical errors that crop up are aplenty, like the scene where a dad and daughter are seen sitting on a couch, when the latter questions the former about a terrible incident that had occurred the previous night. A visibly perturbed dad spits out the coffee that he had been having, and in the very next shot, all the mess seems to have magically disappeared into thin air. Not a film that believes in leaving coffee stains behind, perhaps.
While there are a few scenes that leave you amused, there are also the ones that make you cringe, like the one in the elevator that celebrates flatulence. One of the boys lets out some steam that is quite emphatically visualized, and starts blaming a burly looking man who is in the midst of eating something, even as the others cough and choke as if they have been garrotted. The dialogues have indubitably crude undertones throughout.
The boys are all quite at ease in front of the camera, and the senior men are equally good, with Joju grabbing a big piece of the cake for himself. Of the girls, Vidhya Vijay does a neat job in a role that however holds little promise, while Aishwarya Suresh in a much lengthier role, blows it all over the ceiling.
‘Kaly’ lacks flair, and misses its mark by a mile. And it takes a long, long while to reach its resolution, by which time, it might very well have worn out the very last strands of your patience.
Verdict: Goner Game