The concept of taking law into one’s own hands has been revisited in several films. Mammootty’s Christopher, director B. Unnikrishnan’s second collaboration with writer Udaykrishna, is no different in that regard.
Christopher is an action thriller that claims to document a “biography of a vigilante cop”. But watching the gruesome encounter killings, filmed in a graphically disturbing manner, could prove to be challenging.
Mammootty, who plays a police officer named Christopher, shoots anyone at the drop of a hat because he believes the system is flawed and needs to undergo a massive makeover. He is an encounter specialist who also heads the Division for Preventing Crime Against Women (DPCAW). Every time he believes a person accused of sexual assault would go unpunished, he takes charge and guns them down. Within the first half an hour of the film, he shoots four young men accused of raping and murdering a woman. Soon after, a committee is set up to investigate the ‘encounter’.
Most of the frames, whether the plot requires or not, are focused on Mammootty. Many directors fall prey to the stardom of their leading men and Unnikrishnan similarly relies on the veteran star even as the story is thrown out of the window.
While the first half of the film offers glimpses of a decent thriller, the second half is largely predictable. That still would have been all right had the story not been utterly mediocre and the execution shoddy.
The female characters — IPS officer Sulekha (Amala Paul), activist Amina (Aishwarya Lekshmi), and home secretary Beena (Sneha) — are reduced to token service. Christopher is a ladies’ man, and not in a way that helps the female characters shine. Forget fleshed out characterisation, the film gets rid of them the first chance it gets. For a film that has a running commentary on how women are denied justice, Christopher does a rude disservice to their existence in the film.
Crime against women and extra judicial killings are an ongoing template of the film. After a point, you might lose track of the number of encounters that take place. But the motivation to take such extreme measures at the blink of an eye remains unclear until the very end.
Going by the Malayalam superstar’s previous releases — Rorschach and Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam — Mammootty has developed a habit of shocking his fans with unpredictable and exciting stories. But Christopher is not the fun surprise one would hope for.
(Edited by Prashant)