Movie review 'Oru Mexican Aparatha': Colour is red and phone landline

Cast: Tovino Thomas, Neeraj Madhav, Gayathri Suresh
Director: Tom Emmatty
Rating: 2.5 stars

They don’t state a time, but it seems to be set in the late 90s, when mobile phones were not common, when landlines were everything. Something about the film is also a reminder of the movies of those days, with all that digital absence, and with men talking in hostels to each other (and not their phones), of women, of politics, of petty nothings. But what one might call a fixation, for the movie, is campus politics, taking obvious pseudonyms for the student wings of the major political parties. Where the hero stands for the red flag, quoting the likes of Che Guevara and the opposition carries blue.

Tovino Thomas enters the very first scene, his by now familiar nasal voice narrating the background, a history that he involuntarily becomes part of. He is introduced at first as Paul, the everyday guy at college, unserious, happy to watch the girls go by, cracking up with roommates. Neeraj Madhav as Subash is however the opposite. He has only one thought, to somehow bring the red flag back to a campus that has not seen it for years. They have got friends who think like them, and too many enemies. Roopesh Peethambaran and co are this other gang, members of a party called KSQ. The reds are called SFY.

After a bit of romance, Paul’s attention is caught by the SFY. There is a past that he connects to. But where a lot of spirit is expected, Tovino lags behind. It appears artificial when he raises slogans. He stares, he runs with the flag like a hero. But his character or else the portrayal of it lacks a certain strength that the script has obviously meant it to have. A few other loopholes creep in. When there occurs a death of a prominent character, you expect the mention of it in the leader’s election speech, but he is forgotten. You miss Subash in the climax scenes, when that’s what he had worked for all year.

While the idea is to carry on the spirit of the reds, with dialogues hailing the men who offer food even to the enemy that visits home, ridiculing ideas of forced martyrdom, there is a lack of conviction throughout the script. The kind of ‘party spirit’ you have experienced in yesteryear films, with simpler gestures than heavy dialogues and a lot of blood. The romance part appeared forced too, for the sake of a heroine as Gayathri Suresh - who did good in the little she had to do. Neeraj plays his serious Subash well. Background music is effective. As a first time director, Tom Emmatty is to be hailed, he’s got the basics right, there is no scene that is below par.