Now Premiering - Penguin

Penguin - Though novel in set up and thrill factors, Penguin shockingly loses all its spine chilling intensity to poor writing and execution.

    *The movie is available on Prime Video. Pictures Credit - Prime Video

Thrillers broadly have a pair of precious cards at play. The mood/setting and unpredictable cosmo. Penguin scores great in the mood with its top-notch technical standards and screenplay (to some extent). What makes Penguin an overall middling sore thumb is its inadequate attention or half-hearted approach towards unpredictability. This problem, though it arises at a considerably smaller portion of the film, affects the film’s reception.

The first half is excellent. We get an interesting before-after screenplay, the mother angle of circumstances, Keerthy Suresh’s saving performance, and the most important of all, the abstract canvas on which it builds its thrill factor. The Charlie Chaplin psycho, a 1000 sq.km deep-dark forest where the levels of uncertainty always amp up and the chilling twists - all of these work. The first half is Kshanam’s initial beats mixed Ratsasan’s upheaval, with the eerie setting of....say Badla. Look out for the “Ruthless Monster” scene which gets so interestingly and curiously explained. All of these amalgamed with some innovative ex machinas( like the dog Cyrus) and plot twists. Penguin’s hidden USP will be its cinematography ( by Kharthik Phalani) and apt score (by Santhosh Narayanan). These elements mount up the tension in the first half, scene by scene, exponentially ( just the reason Evaru didn’t work for me than Badla, even though the former was less of a “Remake”) and produce a terrific interval.

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(Click on 16....Counts etc.  to be directed towards the review)

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We do get to see a mother’s struggle for her children’s safety etc. but doesn’t quite drive home the nuance well with Keerthy Suresh’s performance just hitting the “enough” mark as a pregnant mother fighting her turmoil. A Performance in the same shoes (not to compare) was Vidya Balan’s in Kahaani, which had the complexities, carried both physically and mentally.

After watching the first half, it is even possible that you would start making “Grand” theories of “What could have happened?”. But the shocking crash land happens in the second half, where everything that was gold, starts losing its charm, due to - a lack of a strong antagonist (one of them reminded me so much about Los Pollos Hermanos’ caricature from Breaking Bad), a stupid progression of scenes, a never clicked interrogation and the sickening reveal which is an Nth version of the same “clever” twist. We see a very blandly and uninterestingly executed series of scenes that have both bad writing and bad direction. On top of that everything seems predictable and never grim. The mood/set up, which shouldered the movie can no longer support when the core working starts failing.

Penguin could have fared well, at least if the Direction dept. would have done its part better in the second half, in terms of transforming the story from pen to screen. Because it’s this craft that can make wonders, with such an evidently inconsistent (or rather inexperienced) writing.