Ithu Thaanda Police

Story: Ramakrishnan, who is posted as the driver at Elathur women police station, has a stickler (SI Arundhati Varma) as his superior. How he deals with the officer, who has packed off his predecessors at the station, forms the crux of the story.

Review: Like how it happens in buddy cop films, Ithu Thanda Police has a by-the-book officer Arundhati Varma (Abhirami) and a flirtatious, colourful constable-cum-driver Ramakrishnan (Asif Ali) working at an all-women police station. The film has a decent storyline, some likeable characters and a premise that is quite fresh. All that the film needed was some smart work, to piece them together.

The first-half has quite a few promising sequences – Abhirami’s arrival to the station, the song that showcases the personality of Ramakrishnan and a few characters inside and outside the station, with comedy potential. The film tries everything – wringing laughter through character contrasts, a few ‘it-can-get-interesting-anytime’ action scenes and ‘women-can-do-it-all’ situations. However, the makers did not instil flair and energy into them.

Many of the dialogues, situations and characters are badly executed. Sometimes, they are overtly dramatic – when Arundhati brushes off the threats of an ex-MLA. The superior-subordinate conflicts, how the SI handles a rapist and how the victim uses the official connection later in life, the villain-sidekick chemistry, their associations with the higher-ups in the police hierarchy, the plight of a man who keeps visiting the station to get his confiscated vehicle, a committed officer in charge of security who holds on to her gun all the time – in all these sequences the director tries to inject some thrill and humour, without much success.

Thanks to some unimaginative dialogues and clichéd execution and a painfully-colourful song that features Ramakrishnan as a sought-after dude, you feel sorry for the artistes. Within their limited space, the actors have done a decent job. There is no punch in the story that justifies the title or quality entertainment. You wouldn’t mind giving this a miss.