Shane Nigam plays a new cop, taking up his first job in the most trouble-free village possible. At least, that’s what it looks like for a while. Even the people around him are super-nice. But then, a body is found. A robbery happens. And in solving these crimes, the new cop realises what police work is really all about. The result is a not-bad slow-burn drama that keeps accelerating until the big twist at the end. That’s the quick review. A longer analysis follows, and it may contain spoilers.
With his boyish looks and lanky frame, Shane Nigam is perfect for the part of Vijay, who is the new SI in a village called Kuzhinilam. The young man’s key characteristics are that he’s young and that he’s new. Even the car he drives to his posting is brand new; it still has the plastic on the seats. While driving, Vijay gets a call from his uncle, a former cop. Vijay smiles when the car phone rings and he sees who it is, and later, when his parents visit him, unannounced, he welcomes them with a bigger smile, asking how he looks in his new police uniform. Vijay doesn’t smoke or drink. There doesn’t seem to be a trace of dysfunction in him. He seems to be a truly sweet and nice man, and the place he is posted in seems as sweet and nice as him. His uncle tells him that the station is in a trouble-free area, and it’s a great place to start one’s career.
And for about 30 minutes of this two-hour movie, this seems to be true. Dridam has been sold as a thriller, but almost nothing happens for a while. Director Martin Joseph and writers Jomon John and Linto Devasia fill the narrative with details that seem almost inconsequential. We learn, for instance, that this is a rural area and so Vijay will report not to an Inspector but to the DySP. Vijay is shown a place that serves home-quality food. Even the bribes in Vijay’s police station are used not for personal wealth but to do maintenance work, like keeping the toilets in good condition and keeping the CCTVs running. And when Vijay finally seems to get his hands on a case, with a young man found with drugs, he is persuaded by the older cops to let the matter go so that the man’s future is not spoiled. It all seems too good to be true. And it is.
At about the half-hour mark, the idyllic illusion is shattered. First, a body is discovered. Then, there’s a robbery in a finance company. Then, there’s a blackmailing case. I almost laughed. It’s as though the universe has decided that it’s time to end Vijay’s innocence, and the way to do this is to bury him in an avalanche of apparently unrelated crimes. And the DySP is not happy with what he sees as Vijay’s inexperience. Vijay probably got the posting in order to learn the ropes, but now the ropes are a noose, tightening around Vijay and threatening to get him fired from his very first job. Except for the closing portions, Dridam is not a tense thriller. It has an overdose of dialogue. It has small bits of investigation, which are sometimes as banal as police work can be outside the movies. It has genre tropes like a chase in a forest. There’s a nice little set piece where a man escapes an attacker by not panicking and with his presence of mind.
There’s a matter-of-fact approach to the way the story unfolds, through small clues and patient questioning. Those expecting sustained tension are likely to be disappointed, but I enjoyed the feeling of being as lost as Vijay is in this modestly mounted procedural. Towards the end, though, the film’s tone changes, and we see that Martin Joseph does want to follow the footsteps of his mentor Jeethu Joseph. This portion contains a wicked twist, and I liked it in concept even though I kind-of saw it coming. The idea of Vijay getting a practical education in the ways of police work is terrific, but the whole portion is too mass-y in nature, and the change in tonality is not organic. It feels as though a laidback Agatha Christie mystery has suddenly morphed into a Bruce Lee movie. But flaws and all, you look back at Dridam and see that it is really a coming-of-age movie. If Vijay is to be a competent cop, he first needs to learn that there is no such thing as a crime-free zone, and there’s no one who can really be trusted. He has to lose his sweetness, his innocence. And he has to learn that women can be as lethal as men. It all adds up to a nice little variation on the traditional crime story.
