Thallumaala
'Ballad of Brawls' is the English subtitle of the film's title. This grandness is very much felt in the energy of Khalid Rahman's vibrant new film. Every transition to a new scene has an ingeniously crazy idea about it. A photo dissolves into a basin, and a music troop from a future event punctuates and scores scenes set in the present. Even the camera often moves along with the punches and kicks — this design feels warranted.
This is a story of one fight leading to another – a Chain of Fights, as the trailer subtitles it. The engagement is in the narration as opposed to where the story is going. Imagine a butterfly effect, but narrated in a disproportionately non-linear fashion — that's Thallumaala for you. In fact, the core of the quintessential climax is revealed long before we even get to it. A brawl breaks out at a grand wedding, and how we get to this point becomes the plot of the film. The whole thing reads like an energetic comic book with panels popping out with vigour.
One petty fight leads to another. There's no arc for Tovino's protagonist. We don't know what made this local e-boy of sorts, this fist-happy. The actor essays him with sincerity, but I wish there were some underlying emotion to his character. His love-interest Fatima Beevi, played by Kalyani Priyadarshan, isn't given much of a perspective either and is only used as a key piece in furthering the plot.
But there is an action set-piece inside a car that tops it all. This scene is preceded by the villain's attempts at overcompensating for a violent mistake of his. He catches the hero off-guard in a situation where the latter can't settle scores physically. Now there's tension in the air with ample space for comedy. Shine Tom Chacko is great at making his intentions look murky. The setup is strong and the payoff is absolute mayhem. The boiling point is as unpredictable for us as it is for the characters.
To the makers' credit, the craft makes every single set piece engaging. A lead-up to a fight in a theatre playing Vikram Vedha is pitch-perfectly timed to the score of Vedha's entry. Supreme Sundar's stylistic but very believable stunts, and the cinematic flexing in Jimshi Khalid's cinematography, make for a great pair. Vishnu Vijay follows up on a terrific Pada with yet another belter of a score. Nishadh Yusuf's editing delivers, and how.
The film has the energy and vibe of a music video, and it's a feat that this tasteful pacing remains intact throughout the narrative. Emotionally, we only get a mere Chain of Fights than a grand Ballad of Brawls. It's a fulfilling watch for the scale and energy achieved by its craft, but I wish there were something more to it.
