It's been a while since I have written a review which was primarily due to a dearth of movies that enticed me to watch & also coz I had recently moved base to a different city. Since I have started to get acquainted with the new place, I noticed that "Unda" had released in a theatre near by & was more than eager to check it out as the posters as well as trailers had aroused my curiosity. Apart from the fact that it had Mammookka in the lead, it was Khalid Rahman's second directorial venture which raised my expectations. Since the title has the scope of being used as an expletive as well, which choice of word will I use to describe my opinion about it???
The 17th Lok Sabha elections concluded just a month back & if we think about the electoral process, we do realise that it is a mammoth task as we are home to about 900 million eligible voters in a nation which is the seventh largest in the world. As expected, law and order issues are likely to occur in many places but most of them gets nipped in the bud thanks to our efficient armed and police forces. This story is about one such police battalion from Kerala who are entrusted to protect a polling station located in the Maoist prone Bastar in Chhattisgarh. The leader of this nine member team was SI Manikandan (Mammookka), an approachable humane officer who treated his subordinates as his family. They receive a rather inferior welcome at the destination & are mocked for their inadequateness. It soon dawns upon them that they were entrusted with a dire task that they have neither faced before nor equipped to handle.
As I mentioned earlier, this is Khalid's second venture after the well received "Anuraagin Karikkin Vellam" that I absolutely loved. Inspired from real life events, he has penned the script in the company of Harshad & it hits the right notes from the beginning itself. Unlike other cop movies of Mammookka where he is always shown as a macho one man army, SI Mani is a vulnerable middle aged officer who is compassionate towards his fellow beings. There are various aspects that the writers has touched upon be it the hardships that SC/ST officers face even in an educated state like ours, the pathetic situation of the natives in Maoist infested areas where they are looked upon with suspicion both by the armed forces & Maoists, the nexus between politicians and businessmen who try to force the natives into leaving their land & unethical electoral practices with utter disregard for the rules of the administration. We also get a glimpse of the attitude of the present day females who believe that they dont have to compromise for the gross mistake that the husband does.
On the technical side, Sajith Purushan's visuals captures the rawness of Bastar brilliantly and is complemented by Prashant Pillai's music. Mammookka has been on a roll ever since 2019 began with movies like "Peranbu", "Yatra" & "Madhuraraja", all of which has either been critically or commercially acclaimed. This will also be added to that list as he was fantastic as the officer who has his own insecurities and fears. There are a host of other artists as well each of whom have done their parts well such as Arjun Ashokan, Shine Tom, Bhagwan Tiwari etc with Lukman being the pick among the lot.
Verdict: A couple of minutes into the movie reminded me of Rajkummar Rao's "Newton" primarily coz of the choice of the location as well as Bhagwan Tiwari's character which was similar to Pankaj Tripathi's. But the similarity ends there as "Unda" has an identity of its own that makes us laugh & think in equal measure. We empathize with the hardships that the police goes through both from anti-social elements and bureaucracy. It is undoubtedly one of the finest flicks of the year & I hope you guys wont miss it!!!
Rating: 4/5
Regards...Ben
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