"Nna Than Case Kodu" is a new Indian movie from 2022, actually August 2022 it came out in India, so I really pretty much got to watch the version with English subtitles here in Germany immediately after the film was released in its original country India. The language is Malayalam by the way. It says two hours and eighteen minutes here on imdb, so this is a pretty long movie, but if we go by Indian film standards, it is not even that long as quite a few come fairly close to the three-hour mark. I think the duration here was pretty solid I'd say. No need for the film to run for any longer, but also it should not have been much shorter, maybe just a little. The writer and director is Ratheesh Balakrishnan Poduval, still a relatively new filmmaker with no credits before 2019, just one minor acting credit apparently, but this is nonetheless already his third movie and the fourth is also due to come out in 2022, so pretty prolific despite the massive running time. I cannot say anything else about him. The almost exact same thing is true about the cast as I am just not an expert on Indian film or Bollywood at all, but it is always nice to learn new things for sure. The lead actor who is in almost every scene from this long movie is Kunchacko Boban, an extremely prolific actor since the end of the last millennium with over 100 credits now (including upcoming films) and he is also Indian of course and not as Croatian as his last name may sound if you are into football. Soccer I should say.
The biggest female character is played by Gayathrie, actually the almost only female character with some impact to the story at all unless you count that minister. Admittedly, without her, the entire thing would not have gotten off story-wise, but she only has like two very brief scenes. As for Gayathrie (another example of an actor/actress going by a single name, not uncommon in Indian cinema at all), she is really stunning here and plays the reasonable wife character if you want to call it that pretty much. She is not in it for the comedy at all one bit, even if for me her quote about her husband and his injury in terms of looking back and looking to the future was one of the funniest moments of the film, but I am not sure it was intended that way. Anyway, the film's poster is surely a bit misleading because on there she looks like an equal co-lead, which she definitely is not. She disappears for large parts of the film and at its core it is about nobody other than Boban's character. The actor is pretty famous apparently. In my showing there were I don't know maybe 40 people in the room, maybe 50 even and 45 of them were Indian and it was a totally different atmosphere than what you usually have in German movie theaters. They were cheering loudly, laughing very loudly even and applauding in-between. This also referred to the main character. When he is seen first, there was some applauding going on too and whenever he had a scene in which he did something (in their eyes) funny or cool, then it got really loud. I never really experienced it like that. Very interesting sitting for sure. There was also a woman with a baby right next to me, it is also something I never really see with German audiences that they bring their really small kids. Oh and it was not just Boban. If you take a closer look at the other actors' filmographies, you will also see they are very popular, but there was just one other really who got also a bit of applause in his pretty brief scene when he is in the courtroom to make his statement. He must also be pretty famous and popular. Sadly, I cannot give you the name right now.
So, by now you know already that this is a very courtroom-themed movie. Especially in the second half, a great deal of action takes place there. There are serious moments of course, but also quite a bit that will make you smile or even laugh. For me personally, a lot was linked to the judge. He was hilarious with his mannerisms and shenanigans. This may be the Boston Legal fan in me talking. They had amazing judges there too. Anyway, I am pretty sure you would not see a judge like this in real life with how he sometimes behaved in a comedic way. His most memorable serious moment was perhaps when he ordered the allegedly sick politician to come to court nonetheless despite his sickness and said it is not possible that the main character and his wife are always there despite her pregnancy and the politician simply skips. Another memorable moment from the courtroom proceedings involved the main character, namely when he pretended to hit the interrogator and everybody was shocked, but then it turns out it was just to put something on display, to create a parallel between the one who was almost hit and himself with how he reacted the night of the incident that everything is about. He jumped over a wall there and was seen as an intruder and attacked by several dogs. His injuries there were fairly serious, but yet he is the one who has to defend himself. It is all kept a bit light before that though if you look at the way the injuries are elaborated on like half of his butt is missing now or on one occasion they say that it will have grown back until somethhing else happens. Don't remember what exactly. It's been a while since I watched the film. Next time I will be faster with the review. A lot on my mind. Anyway, there is more that can be elaborated on from this film. Romance for once with Indian films is not a big subject. It is only there at the beginning when we see how the main character meets his future wife and how he woos her and the two become a couple, even marry not much later I think. That sure went fast for them. I still feel that for people and eyes of the western hemisphere it/he does seem a bit weird, but it is really meant in a nice and charming and not at all creepy way in Indian films like that and I will not judge here. It is not what the film is about anyway at its core.
Oh yeah, speaking of the beginning, I was also a bit baffled that the main character's friend disappears really quickly. Like totally disappears. I am not sure if he just moved on, continued his road and moved somewhere else, but judging from the beginning how we see them both together there on their journey, I would have thought the character to stay in the movie for quite some time, maybe until the end even. But he was completely gone, maybe because he was the main character's connection to crime and they wanted to show that the protagonist has left all this behind him? I can only speculate. Even if how they were caught there by the police or actually forced to flee and not really caught was also kept pretty simple and light. Nothing dramatic or anything. The animated intro with the two on the run was a bit funny, had a touch of Catch Me If You Can even, but yeah, especially there with the friend included too in this intro, it was unexpected that he vanished. But unexpected does not mean bad or anything. On the contrary. Still, I have some criticisms too for this film. Eventually, it felt a bit too much of a feel-good film for me, also with how it sacrificed realism for that. Like the story with the influential politician getting his share there for not fixing the road, like really legally getting his share was a bit ridiculous no denying and you can maybe morally blame him to a minor extent, but not legally. This was absurd and the film there just wanted to appeal to the simple man too much. The other people in my showing really dug it though. They also did their best to make him seem unlikable like how he is protected by bodyguards, had other people speak for him etc. How he took his power background to the courtroom, but really got exposed there and had to act as an individual. The final court decision was also a bit of a joke. Like why was there all of a sudden another judge anyway, did the case simply go to the next instance where there was no option anymore to not accept the judgment afterwards? I was honestly a bit surprised nobody was cheering when we saw that young judge. I would have thought him to be another popular aspiring Indian movie actor.
Anyway, it was already a bit bizarre that in these main proceedings there was not only not a judgment linked to the main character, but we just assume he goes free and it is pretty much granted and at the same time another character gets a guilty judgment. That was strange. Aren't these trials stand-alone? You cannot just call in another character and in the middle of proceedings turn him into a co-defendant. At least not here in my country. I don't know about Indian law, but that seemed very shoddy to me. Apart from that, there were also some shocking moments of violence. Not many obviously. The best example of this is the very end when we see a few criminals and how they apparently want to kill the main character with their speeding car? That was out of nowhere too. Maybe more influential people paid them to do so. But it was a shocking ending somehow, even if it went wrong and how it went wrong was again about the comedy of course. Another scene that stayed in the mind for the violence, maybe the most shocking scene, was one that had almost zero connection to the main story. It did feel a bit out of place. I am talking about a scene in which a few guys were playing ball I think and then they have an argument and one gets killed even, not just injured I think, but I am not 100% sure about this. In any case, this scene is included because it is mentioned in context later on during the courtroom proceedings. You can also maybe object to the idea that the main character decided to defend himself at court and that he did so well, but was another inclusion of how he was depicted as a real people's man there. It's fine. I was entertained by the movie and I give it a thumb-up which was never in doubt for me at all. Makes me curious about more Indian films, even if I cannot say the film really impressed me.
