FIR (Tamil, Amazon Prime)
Starring Vishnu Vishal, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Manjima Mohan, Reba Monica John, Raiza Wilson
Directed by Manu Anand
Rating: **
Ifran is an Ahmed. And he is not a terrorist. Yes, we got that. Not all Muslims are terrorists, and so and so forth.
At a time when Vivek Agnihotri’s The Kashmir Files clearly shows the victim from the other side of the communal fence, Manu Anand takes the pseudo-liberal view.He goes to great lengths—and this film does appear lengthy although it is just a little more than two hours in length—to show the demonization of the community through an individual’s journey from a mother-loving devout Muslim to a suspected terrorist.
I am afraid the journey is not undertaken with the sensitivity and meticulousness that it demanded.At the end I was not convinced of Irfan’s innocence, and that’s the worst thing the film could do to a terror suspect.
Just by playing plaintive songs about the merciful God at twist and turn in the plot seems like an enforced gimmick to propagate communal trust, as if punctuation marks were being pushed into an essay to make it more lively after the bell for writing the examination paper is over.
Irfan Ahmed is played with a regrettable lackluster that’s concealed in a beard and lots of screaming and hysteria by Vishnu Vishal. The process of targeting Irfan Ahmed who is suspected of being a globally wanted terrorist Faizal Ibrahim Raeez(hence the acronym FIR, get it?) is not only hurried and haphazard it is highly unconvincing and filled with loopholes. When Irfan loses his cellphone during security check at an airport the mobile ends up soon after at the site of a bomb blast nearby, thereby clinching Irfan’s fate.
Was he being framed? Why is it that when Irfan is mercilessly interrogated by a hijab-veiled National Intelligence Agency officer Anisha (Raza Wilson) we don’t feel his fear? Rather than pull into Irfan’s terrifying circumstance FIR pushes us away further and further from the crisis so that Irfan’s plea of innocence falls not only on deaf ears in the film but also leave us cold and indifferent.
We never feel Irfan’s pain even when his police-constable mother(Parvathi T) is humiliated and suspended from her job. There is an utterly ridiculous sequence where Irfan rushes into the hospital to see his ailing mother, screaming and ranting while police officers are everywhere.
Through all this torture ,Vishnu Vishal as the terror suspect remains bogged down by shoddy characterization and a scruffy script over-burdened with technical details on terror activities but meager emotional resonance.
Irfan’s girlfriend played by Manjima Mohan conveniently practices law though we can’t see how she can rescue her boyfriend from doom when evidence piles up against him throughout.
FIR has its heart in the right place. The director genuinely cares for the plight of the innocent Muslim who is suspected of terrorism. And so do we. But it is not enough to care. The care must be compounded by a brish crackling plot which keeps the terror-accused in the net of the law but lets us know that he won’t be there long.
FIR offers us no such comfort. And we really don’t give a damn.