‘Kaanekkaane’ movie review: Manu Ashokan returns with tightrope thriller-drama, that finishes tamely

The ‘Uyare’ director’s latest film works when it patiently unravels its many layers, but spoils it with a convenient stitching-up towards the end

Somewhere along the process of scripting Kaanekkaane, Bobby-Sanjay might have thought about the kind of balance that they would need to keep between its thriller and family-drama elements. All through the intense first half of the film, the pull towards both these sides is evident, in what becomes quite a tightrope walk. This tussle in the structure is almost as engaging as the one within the story... until it lasts.

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At the centre of the story is Paul (Suraj Venjaramoodu), a Government employee, who is yet to recover from the death of his daughter Sherin (Shruti Ramachandran) in a road accident one year before. He is still pursuing the hit-and-run case in court. On a visit to the house of his son-in-law Alan’s (Tovino Thomas) house, who is now married to Sneha (Aiswarya Lekshmi), he feels that everyone else has moved on. But niggling doubts about the daughter’s death makes him pursue the case further.