Director: Priyadarshan; Writer: Priyadarshan; Producer: P.K.R. Pillai; Cinematographer: S. Kumar; Cast: Mohanlal, Nedumudi Venu, Ranjini, Raju, Srinivasan
Duration: 02:36:38; Aspect Ratio: 1.778:1; Hue: 338.531; Saturation: 0.099; Lightness: 0.365; Volume: 0.266; Cuts per Minute: 10.393
Summary: Along with Kilukkam, the same year,
Mohanlal established his collaborations with
director Priyadarshan as among the most
infallible in the commercial Malayalam cinema.
When Kalyani’s (Ranjini) rich father returns
from abroad on a brief holiday to settle the
inheritance of his property, Kalyani’s uncle
(Venu) hires a thief and con man, Vishnu
(Mohanlal), to masquerade as her husband.
The reason for this impersonation is to keep
the father’s property from falling into the hands
of a bunch of baddies (Srinivasan, Raju) who
run the estate. Most of the film exploits the
several comic possibilities of a spirited woman
and a crazy hero being forced to pretend to be
married. The story takes a tragic turn when
Mohanlal is revealed as a murderer facing a
death sentence, and he tells his tale in
flashback. He had killed his deaf-mute
girlfriend Revathi, when he mistook her
Naxalite brother as being her lover. His child
by Revathi was put into an orphanage when he
was arrested. At the end, Vishnu and Kalyani,
having fallen in love, are parted by the law, as
he goes off to his death sentence while she is
saddled with the responsibility of raising his
orphaned child. The film adheres to the
sometimes inexplicable tendency, for viewers
unfamiliar with its generic codes, of 80s Kerala
melodrama to end in tragedy.
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