Kalamkaval Review | Mammootty and Vinayakan Shine in This Satisfactory Reimagination of a Psychopath Story

Before the release of the movie Kalamkaval, there was a lot of speculation about whether this film was about the infamous serial killer Cyanide Mohan. Multiple videos about Cyanide Mohan popped up in my YouTube feed after the teaser of this movie was released, and I think it was one of the reasons why they added the Vallathoru Kadha intro in the movie’s trailer. To narrate a thriller story that is available in the public domain, you will have to use two methods. Either choose a POV that nobody would anticipate, or use the idea and create a “what if” version. Jithin K Jose’s debut film follows the latter approach and manages to deliver a satisfactory thriller with superb performances from both Mammootty and Vinayakan.
So the story here is set in the early 2000s, and Officer Jayakrishnan is assigned the duty of finding out the real reason behind a communal violence that happened in southern Kerala. His investigation eventually finds out that the riot happened because of a certain misunderstanding regarding a girl eloping with someone. On further investigation, Jayakrishnan is dragged into a chain where he finds out about a lot of women who have gone missing in a similar pattern. His efforts to find out what really happened to these women are what we see in Kalamkaval.
Jithin K Jose, the director of this movie, is the one who wrote the story of Dulquer Salmaan starrer Kurup. It was a movie that followed the commercial trajectory and projected Kurup as the gangster don, Alexander. Similar to what they have done in Kurup, Kalamkaval is a reimagination of the Cyanide Mohan story. From Mohan’s pattern of killing to the steps he followed, Jithin K Jose and Jishnu Sreekumar have taken every element from the real story. But the major twist that happens in the tale helps them to use them in a different light altogether. Even though the pattern was shocking, the investigation bit in the original case wasn’t that amusing, and what the movie is trying to do here creatively is to add some flavor to that part of the story.
The real USP of the movie is the anti-hero casting of Mammootty as the cunning womanizer. The signature element of the performance, in my opinion, was the smoothness. There is a moment in the movie where he smiles at one of the victims, and the way that smile transitions into an evil grin in a matter of seconds is extremely smooth. One can see similar non-jarring transitions in his performance at several points in this movie. When it comes to Vinayakan, the performance is much restrained, and it feels a lot more real. There are no exaggerated reactions from this character, and Vinayakan’s composure in most sequences makes that character very grounded. Jibin Gopinath is there as the associate of Vinayakan’s character, but it is not a challenging role. It was good to see Biju Pappan in a role where he is not saying lines in a higher pitch. Shruti Ramachandran, Rajisha Vijayan, Dhanya Ananya, Gayatri Arun, and several other female artists are in these one or two-scene roles that are essential to the story.
As I said, the what-if element in this reimagination is the commercial catch of Kalamkaval. Just when you feel the movie might well become a stylized documentation of a real person, they decide to spice things up. The way they have used the round puff beyond the swagger element is impressive in this film. What happens in the second half of the movie is actually a lot more fictional, where the killer has to update his tactics. Somewhere, I felt in that area, the graph of this thriller drops a bit. The way the ultimate confrontation happens towards the climax is really nice. But the build-up towards that felt a bit uneven, especially some of the immediate flashback sequences that sort of explain the masterplan to us felt a little too cinematic since the rest of the movie was very raw in its approach. The theme score we heard in the teaser is getting used at many crucial points in the film, and it fits well with the negative energy of the scene. The climax fight could have been better. The cuts weren’t that sharp, as we could see characters waiting to get hit.
One of the main joys of watching Kalamkaval is seeing Mammootty and Vinayakan in roles that we don’t really associate with them. While Vinayakan did his part with the required restraint, Mammootty was having a ball playing this part, where he had to hide the psychopathic nature of that negative character. In terms of content, Kalamkaval teases you with something great and offers you something satisfactory.