Perhaps the biggest divergence from the traditional thriller is the amount of time we spend with the cop’s wife. In the most unexpected scene, she pours herself a drink…
Spoilers ahead…
You can read the full review on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/kaalidas-movie-review-sri-senthil-bharath-ann-sheetal-suresh-menon-baradwaj-rangan/
Sri Senthil’s Kaalidas — named after the cop played by a buffed-up Bharath — begins like a whodunit. A woman falls from the terrace of a building. Or was she pushed? And then, another woman ends up dead — it’s another fall from a terrace. We are being set up for a whodunit. Or so we think. But there are signs that something else is afoot. Take, for instance, how these deaths go unnoticed, at first. In the first instance, the splat! of the body hitting the ground is drowned by the noise of an airplane. (Plus, the building’s watchman is half-asleep.) The next time, the person nearest the incident is listening to music on earphones. In other words: What if you screamed and there’s no one listening?
Continued at the link above.
Copyright ©2019 Film Companion.
Baradwaj Rangan 
MANK
December 14, 2019
I liked it to an extent. I felt the resolution was rather far fetched. Not that it isn’t logical, but it was not very well executed in the film and hence felt unconvincing. And as you said, the red herrings were very weak. The film works better as a critique of current society where everyone has become so self obsessed self involved and lost, particularly after the proliferation of internet and smartphones. Bharat was pretty good and comes across a sort of young Arjun .
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MANK
December 14, 2019
The title turned out to be rather interesting. Him being the servant or devotee of Kaali, the goddess of death
BTW, Brangan, would you be reviewing Mamangam?. I found it quite interesting
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brangan
December 15, 2019
MANK: Yeah man. I wish the film had led to the last half-hour, dropping clues throughout — now, it looks too rushed. But still, a very watchable film.
Okay, others — need a favour about the headlines for films like this one, which are somewhere between a rave and a dismissal.
Does “not-bad” sound negative? Would you prefer “watchable”? Any other suggestions?
Because I want to give the impression that there are some nice things here, even if the review isn’t 100% positive.
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praneshp
December 15, 2019
@brangan: “Not-bad” came off as a positive for me; there were enough good things to bump this over the “don’t watch” bar, in your opinion.
I avoided reading the review because of the headline, I’ll do that after the movie comes out on some streaming platform.
Fwiw, I’m biased against a movie rated “watchable”, that comes of as the opposite of not-bad.
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Kay
December 15, 2019
Not-bad seems good enough. I think decent can also be used.
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Rohit Aradhya
December 15, 2019
Not bad doesn’t sound negative, yes, but somewhere this doesn’t get me wanting to watch this in the theater. It’s almost like “Oh okay. Let’s watch it when it comes to streaming” .
Good would be fine i guess, to describe this sort of a movie. It would, at least for me, create a curiosity that’s greater than a Not bad.
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bart
December 16, 2019
My two cents: I would feel “watchable” is one notch higher than “not-bad”. Not bad is something that just escaped being bad while watchable is something that deserves a watch on its own merit, though it may not be good or great.
“Decent”, “modest”, “limited”, “ordinary”, “middling”, “Okayish”, “head-above-water” are few phrases that are similar to above two of which the first two are relatively positive compared to the rest. They can all combine to give positive impact or adverse impact depending on how you wordsmith.
After writing the above, edho “thirupathikke laddu”, “sooriyanukke torch” maadhiri oru feeling saar.. Engala vachu comedy keemedy edhuvum pannalaye neenga?
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krishikari
December 16, 2019
Wow, BR needs writing advice?! “Does “not-bad” sound negative? Would you prefer “watchable”? Any other suggestions?”
Jumping in with no expertise whatsoever: Both those options don’t get the idea across that they were some very good bits along with the bad. To me tempering a positive headline with a negative clause turns the whole thing negative, so why even put the latter in the headline? The weaknesses of the movie could just go in the body of the review.
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abishekspeare
December 16, 2019
I would like you to go back to the days when your titles were full of puns and made us ROFL. Like “don’t” for don 2 or “sea programming” for maryaan and so on. Titles like that give an insanely catchy feel to the review prompting us to read what follows with eagerness.Of course, by not describing/summarising your thoughts explicitly in the title you might repel a few people, but I don’t think you need to bother about them.
Back to good old ways,plisss
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San
December 17, 2019
I would definitely prefer “watchable” for a movie in this space. “Not bad” somehow puts me off.
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San
December 17, 2019
But yeah like abishekspeare mentioned, I would love you to not put summarising titles at all. We can form our own opinion by reading your entire piece.
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jaga_jaga
December 21, 2019
@BR – Very true that this would have been a top-notch movie had the last few minutes not been rushed.
But for the other parts the Director did everything wonderfully. The incoherence/dissonance felt throughout was actually necessary to make sense of it in the end. Anything which could have been done different here?
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