Traffic - What could have been!. Review on Traffic Movie

This was one movie I watched with lots of expectations. The premise itself was so dramatic – a humanitarian initiative where the doctors, the police and the public came together in a rare show of compassion and discipline to save a life. The fact that the premise was based on the real life ‘Chennai’ incident added to the hype surrounding the movie.

I know this movie is getting rave reviews, understandable, considering the quality of the majority of Malayalam movies today. But as someone who remembers how good Malayalam films used to be, I cannot but be disappointed with Traffic’s average execution of a wonderful premise.

The movie, in a nutshell is about an accident and how it affects four lives. Vineeth Sreenivasan’s character, an aspiring journalist, gets seriously injured in an accident and lies dying in a hospital in Kochi. He is sure not to survive but his heart can save the life of the daughter of a Malayalam superstar dying in a hospital in Palakkad.

But time is of essence as the heart needs to be transported to the hospital within two hours through the chaotic traffic on the roads of Kerala. Sudevan, a traffic police man, decides to carry out the highly risky mission, in an attempt to redeem his tarnished name and volunteers to drive the car carrying the donor’s heart to the destination. Will the mission succeed?

Spoilers ahead

== ==

Where ‘Traffic’ works is in going where Malayalam movies have rarely gone before – telling the incidents on a single day from multiple perspectives and weaving these different perspectives together. Yes, like many viewers pointed out, it helps that there are no superstars to steal the limelight from the story itself (as happens most often) and few mindless songs with clichéd https://lyrics.

== ==

Where ‘Traffic’ fails is in believing that the wonderful premise of the movie will make up for one-dimensional characterisation and ‘beyond human logic’ plot loopholes. Just take the case of Sudevan, the traffic constable essayed by Sreenivasan. He is a poor policeman, caught in a thankless and low-paid job, trying to make amends for taking a measly bribe which earned him a suspension and has made him a source of embarrassment for his daughter. However, Sudevan’s character never rises to anything more than these broad brush strokes when his character could very well have turned into the moral centre of the movie. Sreenivasan’s character is the most well-developed. The rest are just types, the good doctor turned jealous killer( Kunjacko Boban), the caring friend (Asif Ali), the self-centred super star (Rahman), the aspiring journo (Vineeth Srinivasan) etc. But where the movie fails miserably is in making us feel any emotional connection with the daughter of the super star dying in a hospital in Palakkad. Since it is the saving of her life which is the emotional core of the movie, one expected at least some time being spent on properly developing her character. She also gets unfortunately reduced to a type - the ailing daughter of the super star, just another trope. And ‘Traffic’, though it indirectly raises the question of preferential treatment accorded to some (one wonders whether a common man or woman’s life would have mattered as much as that of the superstar’s daughter), refuses to seriously engage with it. Images of the superstar’s scary fan association members driving on bikes bullying anyone standing as obstacle to the safe passage of the car (carrying the heart for the transplant) add to the uneasiness. Imagine yourself in the position of the unfortunate victim to a morally righteous fan association as you sit stranded in your vehicle, clueless about the whole thing, listening to the vilest of abuse!

When the premise itself is this dramatic, the least they could have done was avoid adding masala to make it more dramatic and thus take away from the credibility of the movie. Well, who listens? So you have the unnecessary twist in the middle with the car carrying the traffic police man, the friend of the donor and the doctor overseeing the whole thing, going missing.

Coincidence of coincidences, the doctor (Kunjacko Boban) has got into the car after driving his own car over his unfaithful wife. Highly dramatic scenes ensue as the doctor forces Sudevan to drive the car off into a jungle. Highly comic scenes ensue as the traffic policeman, who must have a weapon somewhere, and the friend listen attentively to the doctor crying over the phone confessing his crime to his sister. It does not occur to them that Kunjacko Boban is no Babu Antony or that they are two against one or that a man crying over the phone with his mind on something else is easy to attack or that they have a mission to accomplish. Of course not. But then neither does it occur to the police headed by the Commissioner Anoop menon that in a mission where speed is the essence and you don’t have even time to replace a bad tyre with a spare, an escor t to the car (carrying the heart for the transplant) is necessary. I suppose he always knew that since the car contains Asif Ali who can jump out of any moving car and run like the 3G ZooZoo forcing people on the road to move aside for their car to pass, he need not have worried in case of a break down as well.

So what is my final verdict? Yes, the plot is a complex one and the inter-weaving of the four stories has been done crisply. Yes, it is one of the better Malayalam movies coming out these days. But it is far from the perfect movie that it is touted to be and is symptomatic of the new trend in Malayalam movies where style scores over substance and technical brilliance is supposed to make up for loopholes in the script. I get this growing feeling that Malayalam movies are becoming technically superior but are regressing in terms of their ability to tell complex stories convincingly, in a way only they could, once upon a time.

Postscript:

In between, my poor father, unused to the complexity of multiple narratives asked me what was happening on screen. I, who had seen my ‘Life in a metro’ and our own ‘Kerala cafe’, told him patronisingly, “ore divasam naalu aparichitharude jeevithangal engane kootti muttunnu ennaanu nammal kaanan pokunnathu”. (We are going to see how four strangers’ lives are going to collide on a single day). My father quipped, “Ore cinema kandu naalu jeevithangal paazhakan pokunnatho?( What about the four lives going to get wasted watching a single movie?)” (My mom and sister were watching along). I turned a deaf ear to his PJ, but guess who had the last laugh? I dare not recommend a movie to my father these days after making him sit through the horrors that were ‘Katha Tudarunnu’ and ‘T.D. Dasan Standard IV B”.

Oh, by the way, they are going to re-make this in Tamil with Kamalahasan as the super-star. The script will be changed to give him a greater role. My advice: Read about the Chennai incident instead which inspired this movie. It is far more dramatic and emotionally charged