This post first appeared on Totally Filmi on December 26, 2020
Manu (Sarjano Khalid) goes from official to official to try to secure the release from of his big brother, Sachi (Mohanlal), in prison because he killed his step-mother’s abusive ex-husband. Underaged at fifteen, he is sent to a juvenile home where he makes three friends — Khan (Tiny Tom), Khani (Vishnu Unnikrishnan) and Pareekkar (Irshad). But when his friends are beaten by a sadistic police officer, Sachi kills the policeman to protect them and, because he is now sixteen, he’s sent to serve two consecutive terms in jail. Upon arrival at the central jail, Sachi is placed in a dark cell, where he discovers he has a special ability to see in the dark, and he uses this ability to spend his time training himself to become stronger. When Manu’s efforts finally seem to pay off, Sachi is released, and is reunited with the brother born after he was sent away, and the three friends he helped. The friends want to rope Sachi into a drug deal – they want to get the payoff and move onto better, legal pursuits, but Sachi sees it (at first) as a sure way for him to end up back in prison. None of them notice that they’re being watched, and the man who is doing the watching tells someone that Sachi has refused the deal, but that they’ll find a way to bring him to their side.
Of course, Sachi arrives home just as his step-brother Vishnu (Anoop Menon) – now Dr. Vishnu – is getting married. Vishnu, who was saved from his father’s clutches when Satchi accidentally killed him, purposely postpones his wedding until Sachi can attend. Sachi, after a lifetime spent in prison, clearly has problems adapting to the situation – he cannot sleep in the bedroom they give him, preferring the floor of a dark storeroom instead. He is uncomfortable around the wedding guests (who have been told that he has been abroad), and when police officers arrive as guests (because the bride’s father is on the force), he salutes each one. And whenever he wants to do something, whether it’s drink a glass a water or go to the bathroom, he constantly asks for permission. But when Vishnu’s bride, Vandhana (Honey Rose) meets Sachi for the first time, she has a flashback to the moment when, as a student, she was kidnapped by a terrorist group – and she recognizes Sachi as one of the commandos that came to rescue her, even though Vishnu tells her that was impossible, because Sachi has spent the last 24 years in jail.
And here we get to the start of the problems that, for me, make me impatient with the film. I actually do think that there is an interesting germ of a story in Big Brother, particularly when we realize that there really is more to Sachi, and more to his time in prison, than meets the eye. But I have real problems with heroes who are clearly playing much, much younger characters. Here, if we do the math, we remember that Sachi went to prison at the age of fifteen. Vishnu clearly tells his wife that Sachi spent twenty-four years there, which would make him, at most, thirty-nine upon his release. Mohanlal is sixty years old, and no matter how good an actor he is, he just seems ridiculous playing Sachi. I don’t know how old actor Dinesh Panicker, who plays Mohanlal’s father is, but he’s clearly of a similar vintage to The Complete Actor, and is completely unbelievable as Sachi’s father. Am I being too picky here? Perhaps – and I’m sure the die-hard Lalettan fans would think so. But these are the kinds of things that ruin the enjoyment of a film for me.
Big Brother is loud, it’s long, and it’s an old school type of filmmaking that sets up Mohanlal as a larger-than-life hero – a role he’s played countless times, and a style of film that is generally not my cup of tea, unless it’s really well crafted, but I don’t think Big Brother is, despite the potential I see in its story. I also question the emphasis in the film’s promotion of the Malayalam “debut” of Hindi film actor Arbaaz Khan – for the life of me I cannot see what purpose it serves to cast one of the lesser Khan brothers in a role, and I’m reminded of the similar feeling I had when Vivek Oberoi was cast in Lucifer (also starring Mohanlal). I find it especially annoying when, in both cases, the actors were dubbed by Malayalam actor Vineeth, who, in my opinion (for what it’s worth) should have been cast in those roles instead of just doing the dubbing. This is not like, say, one of my favourite films, Harikrishnans, where Juhi Chawla – dubbed by renowned voice artist Sreeja Ravi – clearly added some value to the film; instead, in both cases, it was Vineeth who added value to the characters through his voice artistry. Ultimately, though, not even that would have made Big Brother a more watchable film for me.