Deepa Soman, TNN, Mar 18, 2022, 11.32 AM ISTCritic's Rating: 3.0Story: Two siblings get murdered on consecutive days and DySP Nanda Kishor, who himself is grieving a death in his family, is assigned to solve the case. How will he handle it?
Review: When the life of an investigator gets intertwined with his case, it’s overwhelming to see his emotional involvement in its proceedings. Debutant Bibin Krishna’s film 21 Grams, starring Anoop Menon in the lead, offers a story of this genre – which is explored quite often in M-Town - now.
Crime branch DySP Nanda Kishore is emotionally recovering from a death in his family, and is quite reluctant when he is asked to take up the murder case of two siblings. When he finally starts working on it, at certain points, he sees the investigation getting intertwined with his own life and thus, complicated. The film is about how he untangles its puzzles, and his own emotional investment in the same.
There are ample suspects, motives, leads and twists in the story throughout, to ‘help’ the audience doubt most characters that appear on screen, while trying to solve it all in their own heads, parallelly. It’s one of those films that also gives you the feeling, on and off, that there’s a lot simmering underneath the stoic surface, as you closely examine the faces appearing on screen. The underlying gloom in the narration, even when not deliberately spelt out, also adds a certain heaviness to the story. All the actors have lent the right emotional essence into the story, too.
Then again, there is a chance that the viewers get impatient with the film’s often erratic pace. Probably it’s kept thus to keep the viewers on their toes, but it’s doubtful whether such a treatment has delivered the thrills intended, especially in the second half. The last twist is interesting, though the scenes leading to it for a few minutes don’t build up the right amount of excitement. Those who love slow-paced police thrillers can give the film a try.