‘Kaduva’ film review: Shaji Kailas-Prithviraj team delivers a predictable, old-school mass action film
The Hindu
At its core, the film is the story of an ego clash that crosses all limits
A decade is a long time for a filmmaker to stay away from the medium. Since Shaji Kailas made his last film, Malayalam cinema has changed unrecognisably. But, in his years in hibernation, it appears Shaji Kailas has not. With Kaduva, he loudly proclaims that he still swears by mass entertainers.
Although the film is based on a real story, there might be more reasons than one for the fact that he has set his latest movie too in the 1990s, a period which witnessed the releases of his most successful movies, that ended up setting a template for a string of duds, some of it made by Shaji Kailas himself.
At its core, Kaduva is the story of an ego clash that crosses all limits. Planter Kaduvakkunnel Kuriyachan (Prithviraj Sukumaran) locks horns with Inspector General Joseph Chandy (Vivek Oberoi) over issues related to the local parish, which snowballs into something big enough to put the State government in trouble. Most amusing is the fact that it all begins from an old woman's donation of a piano to a church.
It would be interesting to view the ego clash here in comparison to that in Ayyappanum Koshiyum, which has set the gold standard for ego clashes in films. While that movie initially stands with the underdog and later shows how the ego consumes him too, in Kaduva, it is a clash between two equally powerful, privileged men, one who is painted all black, and the other all white, even in his attire.
Everything that Kuriyachan does is seen through a heroic lens, including the use of his hereditary money power to play political games, like a crude form of a modern-day electoral bond. But then, everything gets justified when it comes to a rightful feeling of revenge.
The only time he is shown to be in the wrong is when he publicly insults the mother of his nemesis, an act for which his wife Elsa (Samyuktha Menon) questions him (the only time this character gets to say something of substance). But even this act is justified in the following scene, which is written just to show why the woman deserved it.
Kaduva is also the story of the misuse of official machinery to settle personal scores, and the fact that some of it happened in real life makes it even more shocking.