Chaaver review: An overindulgent political thriller lost in a sea of slow-mo

The chocolate boy romance hero of the '90s and early 2000s, Kunchacko Boban has transformed himself into a versatile performer who can play good, bad and ugly equally well. Here, he plays Ashokan. (Screen grab/YouTube/Think Music India)

The chavers, in history, were suicide squads who served in the military of chieftains and kings. They were famed for their loyalty and practice of exacting revenge at any cost. Tinu Pappachan’s political thriller Chaaver (written by Joy Mathew) draws a comparison between the unquestioning bloodthirsty men of yore and political assassins in contemporary Kerala.

The film begins with a murder. A party youth is hacked to death by a group of men. One of them, Ashokan (Kunchacko Boban) is seriously wounded, and that’s how medical student Arun (Arjun Ashokan) lands himself in the conspiracy. The first half of Chaaver is fairly gripping. The chocolate boy romance hero of the '90s and early 2000s, Kunchacko Boban has transformed himself into a versatile performer who can play good, bad and ugly equally well. As Ashokan, Boban’s face is in a perpetual scowl – he kicks, slashes and strategizes over the phone. But he’s given very little to work with. The others in the squad get even less; we barely register their names, let alone their stories.

The tendency to stylize every shot makes the film less effective emotionally. (Screen grab from Chaaver trailer/Think Music India)

Perhaps this was deliberate – to suggest the anonymity of these squads and the cold, dehumanized ways in which they operate. But, characterization can be achieved even with sparse details. All of them wear uniform expressions, and the film tries desperately to hype every scene with showy shots and pumping background music. For instance, when Ashokan gets down from a jeep in a jungle, the camera doesn’t just show him – it shows his reflection in the rearview mirror. Sure, it looks stylish, but when the same technique is employed over and over again without adding any meaning, the effort looks laboured.

This tendency to stylize every shot also makes the film less effective emotionally. In the climax, when pivotal characters are on the verge of death, the camera again comes off as self-indulgent, calling attention to the finesse of the filmmaking rather than allowing us to be drawn into the film and its characters. There’s plenty of everything – visuals of running dogs, panoramic shots of scenery, close-ups of eyes and beards, and colourful tourist brochure shots of Antony Varghese in Theyyam costume and makeup (why cast a talented actor and waste him like this?). But it doesn’t amount to anything because the writing has no layers or nuance.

In one film, a young man is tortured by the police for information. He refuses to give it, and when someone asks him why, he simply says, “He is my friend.” This scene ought to make us feel something about that friendship, but Pappachan turns it into a punchline without any context. Similarly, a funeral scene becomes about how wonderfully the junior artists can express their grief in disturbing close-ups rather than tell us anything about the dead man that will make us mourn for him too.

The lines that the characters spout are vague and repetitive. “What should we do now?” , “Where should we go next?” and so on, as if they’re caught in a placid existential crisis in Waiting for Godot rather than a frenzied political thriller. The uncertainty ought to add tension to the screenplay but it has the opposite effect, draining our interest completely. This is particularly true of the second half where Pappachan goes overboard with the slow-mo.

The only significant female character is Arun’s mother (Sangita), who is a teacher and political activist. Like everyone else in the film, her characterization is limited to looking mega grim all the time. There are allusions to the Party, how the Party functions, how the Party exploits people, etc. None of it hits home because the writing treads on eggshells. Why make a political thriller if one has to be so cautious? B. Ajithkumar’s Eeda (2018), which was also on political murders, was a far better film, unafraid to make its point. Chaaver is so worried about upsetting the political class and its supporters that the film censors and mummies itself into silence before anyone can point any fingers.

Chaaver takes itself far too seriously when the material is unfortunately quite hollow. In a crucial scene, one of the characters in the film throws a bomb that fails to explode – that pretty much sums up the experience. There was potential in the idea, but it just doesn’t blow your mind because the fundamentals are wrong.