Officer On Duty - Chain Gang

 

Office On Duty

2025, Malayalam

Genre: Police Thriller

Where to Watch: Netflix

Director: Jithu Ashraf (debut)

Stars: Kunchacko Boban, Vishak Nair, Jagadish, Priyamani

Mohan's Measure ⭐⭐⭐

As far as the acting, the investigative style, the tone of this complex noir thriller, and perhaps the very fact that it stars Konchacko Boban, Officer on Duty should have been an easy five-star film.  

Indeed it amazes me at just how detailed the apparent holes in such a complex plot are brought to a rational closure in the second half.  Officer on Duty outlines the life of a disgruntled cop suffering from PTSD, who finds himself pulled down a rabbit hole in investigating what starts off as simple chain-snatching robbery.  What presents before him takes him to the edge of madness and back, recalling tales of suicide and murder.

A murder that is covered up by a self-surrendering fall guy, the very same fall guy who is killed in the present, by a host of villains so evil, they become like icons for everything wrong in the world.

And it is here where my impressions of the film start to fade.  There is no explanation as to the behavior of this young people, or how they have had so much power and influence in shaping all the events that unfold before us. Nor is there explanation as to why they would want to record their own crimes. There is something unhealthy about this, a nauseating feeling that people, without any good reason, can treat others so viciously and enjoy it afterwards in revelry. That is the stuff of mass Bollywood and Tollywood, so it is a terrible fit to call for this device in Malayalam cinema.

But, the movie explains how in the end, perhaps through Providence, a poetic justice is served, as a set of coincidences brings a jigsaw puzzle into shape. 

But, the scales of justice just don't quite balance out in the end.