The medical profession is a double-walled enclosure : nobody inside the enclosure admires talents outside of it, nor do they even acknowledge achievements outside of it. Many doctors even seem to be classically trained to acknowledge only achievements within medicine and even worse, to disrespect those out of medicine. They are a group of people for whom the measure of capability is still, only the possession of degrees. Unfortunate, but true..!!!
From such a paddock, if someone manages to find an opportunity to act in a feature film, even for a short screen time, it indeed is an appreciable accomplishment.
"Rani - The True Story" would have been just another movie that I might or might not have seen in theatres - but when my ex-colleague, the talented Dr. Deepak Das messaged me about his involvement with the movie, I decided to watch it for sure.
A typical Sankar Ramakrishnan movie in every frame, Rani is the tale of a murder investigation, narrated quite differently. In the barely 120-minute runtime, Guru Somasundaram plays the villain, and a troop of ladies from the ever-versatile Urvashi to the new-age sensation Honey Rose enacts supporting characters with effortless ease. But the real show stealer is Niyathi Kadambi a young left-handed Tamil actor, the daughter of yesteryear actor Devadarshini, who plays the titular character of Rani, a housemaid who is accused of the murder of an MLA, but is defended strongly by the three households she works.
Indrans plays the role of his lifetime as retired Inspector Bhasi, who is called in to assist the investigation team. My colleague Dr. Deepak plays a character by the same name, as a forensic expert called into the crime scene.
Songs by Mena Melath disappoint big time as with any contemporary Malayalam movie. As always, I repeat my million-dollar question - why aren't filmmakers interested in MJ, Ouseppachan, Ilaiyaraja, or at least Gopi Sundar, anymore to make songs for their movies? Re-recording by Jonathan Bruce is okay with all those beats and peppy music. Cinematography is noticeably brilliant with textbook frames. DI and colour correction are near perfect. Editing is brisk pre-interval but the pace of the film slows down drastically, post-interval.
However, an area that could have slowed down for good is the screenplay because the screenplay takes minimal time to establish the key characters and that makes it a bit difficult for the viewers to follow Shanker's story. The names of the characters shown on screen on a diagonal red background last less than a couple of seconds and it can barely be read. Subtitles were not screened in Artech Cinemas, Pattoor Thiruvananthapuram, where I saw the movie.
Rani is an engaging watch for sure, for lovers of thrillers. Once again, well done, and congratulations Dr. Deepak Das for getting yourself shown on the silver screen.
My rating 6.5/10
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