‘Kurup’ movie review: Dulquer Salman’s crime biopic takes too many liberties with a real-life story

Kurup begins with a protracted disclaimer, which like all disclaimers, is stuffed with half-truths and disappears in a flash. It appears to have been geared toward distancing the film from the real-life story, on which it’s clearly primarily based. The horrific act of crime, which gave Kurup his notoriety, doesn’t seem within the film till properly in the direction of the halfway level. However, the film which takes plenty of inventive liberties, presents this crime as one in a sequence of such acts by Gopikrishna Kurup (Dulquer Salman).

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The story and script, written by Jithin.Okay. Jose, Okay.S.Aravind and Daniell Sayooj Nair, spends appreciable time in establishing his character with an elaborate backstory. Kurup’s crooked nature is obvious proper from the start, when he makes his mother and father imagine that he had handed a public examination, which he had not. On the Air Power coaching camp too, he devises methods to get issues accomplished his method and make some cash. A few of these early sequences, together with one the place he fools the remainder of the trainees or one other at a university rock pageant, appear moderately compelled, with the purpose simply being to underline the character’s flamboyant nature. The romance with Saradha (Sobhita Dhulipala) additionally appears to be there simply to tick all of the packing containers of a mainstream film, with the character virtually disappearing totally within the latter half.

Kurup’s story is revealed to us via the recollections of his Air Power colleague Peter (Sunny Wayne), the diary entries of police officer Krishnadas (Indrajith Sukumaran) and from Kurup’s personal model of the story, which fills the blanks left by the others. Charlie (one other star in a shock function), the sufferer of Kurup’s felony act to assert an insurance coverage quantity, and his household, get simply a few scenes, as a result of this film is all about Kurup, his depraved plans to maneuver up the ladder and naturally, his many trendy seems.

To their credit score, the writers do lay naked the felony bent of his thoughts, however on display, many a time the digital camera worships Kurup as a hero, with the unmistakable heroic tone of the background rating in sequences the place he offers the police and his different adversaries a slip. Distinction this remedy of the character Kurup with that in NH 47, made again in 1984, primarily based on the identical incident. Regardless of its sloppily-written scenes and low manufacturing values, it obtained proper the characterisation of Kurup, performed by T.G.Ravi, with a viewer by no means for as soon as feeling like sympathising with or clapping for a scene wherein he’s proven. Though the makers of Kurup have included sufficient scenes to defend themselves in opposition to accusations of glorifying a felony, additionally they appear to have been compelled to incorporate some scenes to fulfill the star’s followers.

One of many issues the movie will get proper is the manufacturing design, particularly in scenes set within the bygone period, with tastefully-done recreations of the Nineteen Seventies and 80s. One may have taken a a lot kinder view of the script, which is participating in elements, if not for the truth that it’s primarily based on an precise ugly crime. If the intention was to inform the intriguing story of a fugitive, with out even remotely celebrating him, they may have taken a number of classes from David Fincher’s Zodiac. For, there’s solely a lot ‘inventive’ liberty that one can take on the subject of a real-life story, regardless of all of the disclaimers.

Kurup is presently operating in theatres