Christopher(Prime Video)
Rating: ** ½
Mammootty is very effective while communication a seething rage through his silences. As an encounter cop Christopher Anthony, he hardly says much ; as the world around him goes up in flames—quite literally at times—Christopher seethes in anger.
It is a vicious world that the cop-hero has inherited from the writer of this pulp plot(Udaykrishna) where women close to Christopher are constantly being raped and killed provoking him into extra-constitutional action.
We have seen such angry trigger-happy cops in numerous films on vigilantism. What sets Christopher apart? Nothing, really. Except that Mammootty is a startling bundle of raging silences. Even in long shots we can make out every shred of his anger.
The supporting cast is also one with Mammootty’s silences. Dileesh Pothan as Christopher’s cop colleague Abhilash who is not averse to making some extra money through corrupt practices, imbues a core of empathy into his character. It is not easy remaining incorruptible when all around you the world is shredding itself into a moral trashcan.
In the endeavour to portray the fall of the human empire,Christopher is bit of a hyphenated endeavour where , in potential to create an explosive film on cleansing the gutter , resorts to guttural devices of storytelling.
If too many cooks spoil the broth then too many rapes ruin the intentions of this mass-hysteria evoking film . Women almost seem to be sexually assaulted so that Christopher canassume a see-I-told-you attitude to encounter killings. The efforts to prove vigilantism to be the only solution to brutal rape crimes(Christopher, in a rare outburst, even invokes the ‘Nirbhaya’ case)are largely excessive and exaggerated.
Also the crime itself didn’t need to placed on camera every time. Towards the prologue two minor girls are kidnapped and raped in a moving vehicle.Why enter the vehicle when we have already been told how brutal and gruesome the assault was?
The plot moves salaciously from episode to episode of sexual violence . By the time Christopher’s foster daughter Ameena(Aishwarya Lekshmi) is assailed by a Tamil sociopath at the Kerala border(damn, it is always migrants creating havoc) the show has lost all credibility. Going from the conscientious to the salacious Christopher Loses it way in the sleazy storytelling.
Mammootty deserves better.So do all the ladies on our country who are assaulted every day in some part of the country.