‘Kurup’ movie review: Dulquer Salman’s crime biopic takes too many liberties with a real-life story

One could have taken a much kinder view of the script, which is engaging in parts, if not for the fact that it is based on an actual gruesome crime

Kurup begins with a long disclaimer, which like all disclaimers, is filled with half-truths and disappears in a flash. It seems to have been aimed at distancing the movie from the real-life story, on which it is clearly based. The horrific act of crime, which gave Kurup his notoriety, does not appear in the movie until well towards the midway point. But, the movie which takes a lot of creative liberties, presents this crime as one in a series of such acts by Gopikrishna Kurup (Dulquer Salman).

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The story and script, written by Jithin.K. Jose, K.S.Aravind and Daniell Sayooj Nair, spends considerable time in establishing his character with an elaborate backstory. Kurup’s crooked nature is evident right from the beginning, when he makes his parents believe that he had passed a public examination, which he had not. At the Air Force training camp too, he devises ways to get things done his way and make some money. Some of these early sequences, including one where he fools the rest of the trainees or another at a college rock festival, seem rather forced, with the point just being to underline the character’s flamboyant nature. The romance with Saradha (Sobhita Dhulipala) also seems to be there just to tick all the boxes of a mainstream movie, with the character almost disappearing fully in the latter half.