Iratta Movie Review

Introduction

The movie 'Iratta' is an Indian Malayalam-language police procedural film which is written as well as directed by Rohit M. G. Krishnan. The movie has actors such as Anjali, Arya Salim, and Srikant Murali and has Joju George in dual roles. The basic plot of the movie is that a police officer dies during his working hours inside the Vagamon police station and an investigation goes on to find what happened.

Story

The killing of ASI Vinod Kumar, DSP Pramod Kumar's twin brother, marks the beginning of the movie. ASI John, CPO Bineesh, and SCPO Sandeep are the three people being investigated for the murder. At the Vagamon police station, the three police officers shared a hostile working relationship with Vinod due to a number of things that happened between them. The instances that each of the three related independently imply that Vinod was a drinker and an adulterous. Bineesh described the day he overheard Vinod leaving a lodge room after intoxicatedly raping a 17-year-old girl.

An ex-drinker who has now been sober, Pramod has been apart from his wife Shreeja, and daughter for a while. Sreeja travels to Mumbai with their young daughter after becoming frustrated with his intoxicated behavior. Pramod remembers Vinod and his youth. Both brothers grew up being raised in the same home with a violent and absent father who, ironically, also worked as a police officer. Due to his father's adultery, his parents get into a heated argument one day and eventually get separated as a result of these fights. While Vinod is abducted against his will by his father, Pramod resides with his mother. Vinod feels deceived and abandoned to deal with his father's abuse, which feeds his animosity against Pramod and his mother. One day, the villagers and neighbors of his father killed him for trying to have a sexual relationship with a minor.

Years later, the twins choose separate careers as police officers. While Vinod develops into a vicious and cunning Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI), Pramod becomes a well-liked and honorable Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP). DSP Satish, a trusted assistant of Vinod, is currently in charge of the probe. Because he is aware of their history and shared enmity, he also suspects Pramod. The account of Vinod's girlfriend Malini, who just entered his life and altered it for the better, serves to further support this. Pramod is first excluded from the inquiry as a result, but he later asks to take the matter upon himself. He moves the inquiry along fast, and it is found that each of the three suspects has a convincing alibi. Then he receives a video from a media person showing two kids playing cricket with their dog in a neighboring field. Contacting them reveals that one of the kids saw what happened. Vinod died while picking up his cricket ball, and contrary to what they originally believed, it was a suicide.

As a result of the shocking new information, Pramod starts to investigate the reasons behind Vinod's suicide, especially because it appears that he was quite content after meeting Malini. At this time, several police officers unearth a video from a music reality program that Vinod had been viewing immediately before he killed himself. When Pramod spots Sreeja in the crowd, he realizes that his now-adult daughter Shweta is taking part in the competition. Pramod assumes the worst and uses the reality show tape to identify the young woman Vinod raped at the hotel. Pramod makes the speculative claim that Vinod committed himself after realizing he had violated his own niece.

After learning of Vinod's passing, Sreeja attempts to contact Pramod in the last moments of the movie. She inadvertently "saw" her father's face that fateful night at the lodge, therefore he severely orders her to keep him a secret and never expose his face. Unknowingly, Pramod is now required to atone for Vinod and his father's errors and transgressions.

Review

'Iratta' is an experimental study of repercussions that goes beyond the ideas of action and reaction generally examined in the film thanks to its slam-dunk finale. In Malayalam movies, males who are positioned as the heroes of their own storylines seldom ever suffer appropriate penalties for their arrogant behavior towards women. One of the main characters in Rajesh Pillai's 'Traffic' (2011), a movie that helped launch the "Malayalam New Wave", is genuinely pardoned for running over his wife with a car. The pardon may have occurred after he feared retaliation, which almost cost him his life, but that's where it came from.

It is crucial to see more 'Halkettiolanu Ente Malakha' (2019), a rare Indian movie that directly refers to sexual assault in the bedroom as rape, however, it should be highlighted that the offender in the plot finally accepts responsibility for his actions. I just couldn't locate it. Even the thorough analysis of fleeting moral faults in 'Keekanekkane' (2021) treated Tovino Thomas' character more kindly than it ought to have. But what makes all three of them unique is that the males were made to answer for the deeds they committed against their female coworkers, which cannot be said of the majority of mainstream Indian films or Malayalam in particular.

When taken as a whole, they raise concerns about the extreme behaviors that these screenwriters decided to highlight in their narratives?behaviors for which it would be hard to find a woman absent from any Indian movie and it is but obvious that there will be pressure. 'Iratta' (the twin) comes to us in this setting. The titular twins, ASI Vinod and DSP Pramod, who are assigned to a Vagamon police station, are portrayed by Joju George. Vinod already fired a shot at the action. The government puts pressure on the police to crack the case swiftly as a result of pressure from the media.

The matter is being looked into by a team led by SP (Arya Saleem). Through conversation and flashbacks, we learn about the siblings' upbringings, their various personalities, and their moral perspectives as they go about their work. These details finally point us toward the reason for Vinod's tragic fate. The plot is behind the police's efforts. This is due in part to certain literary flaws, such as some weakly characterized supporting actors and the depiction of infancy in Vinod and Pramod, but mostly, I believe, because writer-director Rohit M. G. Krishnan doesn't want to surprise us with this. Until that famed finale hits us, we question whether 'Iratta' is just another boring police procedural. The conclusion doesn't simply include a huge shocker; it also makes apparent what the rest of the movie has in store. This is when JoJu George's brilliance truly shows.

'Iratta' comes after a string of performances by Joju that are all of the same caliber, yet it must be considered one of his best pieces if not the absolute best. The look on his face when one of his characters in 'Iratta' finally understands what he has done, the moment he truly understands the dreadful truth of what it means to be a twin, and the contradictory feelings of one brother are both examples of a performer at the top of his game. Vinod and Pramod both get an unsettling trait from Joju, who turns them into erratic individuals who are perpetually on the point of exploding.

Vinod and Pramod are the main characters, yet the screenplay struggles because it treats the other actors inconsistently. Seethinkalajcha Manoj Ku Nishchayam has a well-written minor part as John, a workmate who is suspected of being responsible for Vinod's passing. Anjali, who plays Vinod's sweetheart, is constrained to playing a quiet, disturbed character. Her first distasteful actions towards him call for a closer examination of the sensations she eventually feels. Arya Salim is not, it should be observed, a centerpiece of the movie.

In recent years, a lot of Malayalam films have given women leadership roles in their tales but nothing more to do, making it obvious that these female characters are erasing and marginalizing women. It was included in the script as a preventative measure against potential criticism. 'Anjaam Pathira' (2020), in which Unnimaya Prasad played a high-ranking police officer who at the beginning of the movie appears to be handling matters but doing nothing as an incompetent fool while a man is tracking down a serial killer, is one of the most disturbing and degrading examples of her being criminally wasted. It is therefore a relief that the female SP in Iratta does not complain but instead persistently investigates and effectively balances the challenges facing her force with the excessive expectations of the Minister of State (Srinda).

If Mantri's writing is bad, it's more about the characters around Vinod and Pramod being ignored than about gender. Although equal representation in Malayalam cinema is still far from being achieved, films like 'Iratta', which include these women in the plot without making them perform songs and dances about their gender identity, will likely help to gradually increase the number of female actors. If this movie is viewed as a continuation of the nature vs. nurture argument, it would seem that neither a person's upbringing nor their surroundings can be completely held accountable for who they become.

In particular, the film's perspective on domestic violence is remarkable. The majority of society will not view someone misbehaving with a lady as engaging in violence. But he subsequently offers her an apology. In Indian cinema, it is exceedingly uncommon for a male protagonist to apologize to a woman, and even more uncommon for him to do so for an action that, in reality, would not get the appropriate level of condemnation.

Conclusion

Iratta is both a police procedural and a crime thriller, although to call it either would be an understatement. The movie can be termed a major step towards the rightful representation of sexual violence and it draws a lot of focus on what comes after bad deeds are bad consequences. The movie is a great work packed with incredible acting by almost all the characters. The movie also generates a moral question of who is to blame for the bad actions of people, the person themselves or their environment, and psychological factors. To sum it up, the movie proves to stand out among all the Malayalam movies made and is worth a watch.