In the year 2025, perhaps it isn’t a coincidence that Malayalam superstar Mohanlal’s box office comeback stems from a movie with a lot of similarities in terms of aesthetic and basic character layout to “Drishyam.” It wouldn’t be too far off to call it “Drishyam 3” without sharing the official name or the team behind that series.
The above paragraph works better as a one-liner review, but the comparison of Tharun Moorthy’s “Thudarum” to Jeethu Joseph’s hugely popular “Drishyam” series would be a reductive statement. It does share the basic layout of the protagonist essayed by Mohanlal—a common Malayali family man having to act against the auspices and constraints of law to deliver justice. The similarity ends there because “Thudarum” is far more Hitchcockian in its construction of the “wrong man accused and on the run to clear his name” than even “Drishyam” had been.
Meaning “Continuation,” “Thudarum” does begin as most Malayalam films tend to do—setting up the protagonist and his family and the milieu in low-key yet painstaking detail. It’s a feature of Malayalam cinema that unfortunately becomes a bug as the movie progresses. The storyline’s methodical pacing chooses first to highlight not just Shanmugham AKA Benz’s family life, but also the deep relationship he shares with his prized possession—a black Ambassador Mark 1.
It is notable how much the relationship with his ambassador and the minor strife, a joyride on that same ambassador, causes between Benz and his son Pavi drive the plot forward in both apparent and implicit ways. For the majority of the first 40 minutes, it seems to be a Kafkaesque comedy, with bureaucracy and the law’s inability to aid its citizens coming into sharp focus.
The plot rears its true, sharp, insidious head when Benz regains his Ambassador back after managing to untangle it from a major drug deal with no small help from DySP George Mathan (Prakash Verma), but then becomes entangled in a deeper hole when he is hired by Mathan to take him and his comrades to a marriage party.
Later that night, rather uncomfortable at being stuck in an unknown marriage party and rather uncomfortable at handing over the reins of the Ambassador to the acerbic and drunk SI Benny, Benz finds himself in a pickle when he learns that he is unwittingly an accomplice. His beloved ambassador has unknowingly become a hearst, and it is that corpse — a victim of brutal interrogation by Mathan—— and its burial deep within the hills that Benz becomes involved in and tries desperately to get out of. But not before unknowingly realizing the true identity of that corpse and his personal connection to that victim.
There are enough such elements to admire in “Thudarum”—the sharp, devastating twist in the tale experienced by “Benz,” as laid out in the previous paragraph; the gorgeous cinematography of Shaji Kumar; the thunderous score by Jakes Bejoy; and, of course, Mohanlal. He is aided by a preening, manipulative, one-note but never not compelling villain in Prakash Verma’s George Mathan. On the flip side, the extended set-up and the wholesome tonality are perhaps the only substantial space given to veteran actress Shobhana, whose reunion with Mohanlal onscreen definitely elicited interest among long-time fans of Malayalam cinema as well as cinephiles in general, but that shortchanging of Shobhana is disappointing in that regard.
Mohanlal’s recent superstardom, post-2019’s “Lucifer,” does push his films into a far more traditional commercial bent. Unlike Mammootty, whose superstardom finds him doubling down on experimental and risky narratives alongside traditional commercial fare, Mohanlal’s superstardom takes more of an expected route. The fight sequences, as a version of catharsis, seem far more an indication of that stardom and heroism than one would expect from a “Drishyam,” whose comparison “Thudarum” inadvertently falls back on.
Unlike “Drishyam,” the outsized heroism of Mohanlal feels at odds with the very detailed outlining of the “common man” that had been provided since the beginning of the film. One can argue very well that the movie highlighting the extreme normality of Benz’s character essentially provides space to push the character to extremes under emotional duress. But again, that brings to the point Mohanlal’s stardom, allowing Benz to deliver choreographed fight scenes (even if Benz’s past life as an ex-stuntman provides somewhat of a narrative explanation).
Moorthy’s handling of the plot post the second half feels far more urgent, though nothing remarkably unique. The police brutality shown towards women and children, especially towards the end, is over-the-top in terms of villainy. It’s less about being utterly transfixed and horrified at the harm befallen to these characters and more about a distant gaze at police brutality and torture being such a staple part of the narrative in general, which makes that entire sequence feel overwrought.
It amplifies the anguish endured by Lalitha (Shobhana), her daughter Pavithra, and Mary, George Mathan’s own daughter, while casting George Mathan and Benny as almost exaggerated villains—an intensity that clashes with the film’s otherwise grounded, realism-driven narrative. The symbolism of the lone tusker and the elephant protecting his child feels retrofitted to match the gorgeous opening sequence in the forest, rather than being intrinsically tied to the narrative
Mohanlal, however, is completely in his element in these films. The intense glare and the cry of despair at the end of every violent act being undertaken provide you with perhaps the closest Mohanlal can choose to push himself post his outsized superstardom. “Thudarum” is less “Drishyam” and more evocative of Nithilan Swaminathan’s “Maharaja” in how it chooses to depict the limits of a common man as well as the character arc of an inanimate object.
It’s entirely a coincidence that Vijay Sethupathi, who plays the protagonist in “Maharaja,” has a cameo in the film (at least I hope so). I do appreciate how much the film tries to highlight the stunt community of the Tamil and the Malayalam film industry within that extended setup, even though I still argue that the movie could have been at least twenty minutes shorter.
