Director: Srini
Cast: Srini, Rukmini Vasanth, Madhusudhan Rao, Suresh Heblikar, Sujay Shastry, Vineeth Kumar, Ravi Bhat, Aruna Balraj
Apart from the only connection with the famed 15th century poet, advisor to Emperor Akbar — Birbal, whose real name is Mahesh Das, this reel Birbal has neither his wit nor his intelligence. The two-plus hours of the journey into probing a wrongly convicted individual as innocent lack the punch on many levels.
Also, the movie has many similarities with the Korean movie Jaesim released in 2017, which in English means “new trial,” where an advocate works hard investigating on proving a wrongly convicted person innocent.
Written, directed and also starring Srini, the first from the Birbal trilogy kick-starts with the case of finding Vajramuni. Who is this Vajramuni, and why does Mahesh Das, the protagonist go behind an eight-year-old murder case to uncover the truth, is the epicentre of this “whodunit” tale.
The protagonist is an extremely intelligent lawyer and has all the qualities of a clever detective agent! But wait, he is just selected as an apprentice with a leading law firm, and is later given his first ever case as part of the free legal aid programme.
The most crucial aspect for a thriller of any nature on celluloid is to keep the audience engaged for an edge-of-the-seat experience. Unfortunately, Birbal lacks this momentum. But for a couple of moments, the audience has a laborious time as they become curious about who the actual killer is.
A genre of this nature is really challenging and the credit definitely goes to the maker for his honest attempt but the faltered execution spoils the fun.
Justice is delivered in no time in the beginning. First the killing, and the accused is swiftly convicted by the court with life imprisonment. And, after eight years, the convicted is out on parole.
This is when advocate Mahesh Das enters, taking the case as part of the legal aid programme from the legal firm which he has just joined. His fiancee is already a practising advocate in the firm.
He along with a less intelligent assistant and his lovely fiancee run around to find the real culprit.
After the lawyer investigates the case through four separate dimensions, he finally gets the real murderer arrested. That’s all. In between there is a song, Mohan Das’ “extreme” intelligence, a time freeze sequence in which he cracks the case is all which is packed in this first case. And, it's a trilogy! Unbelievable!
