Hareendran Oru Nishkalangan? is jaded

Prolific director Vinayan trains his camera on mob justice under the influence of the electronic media in the Malayalam film, Hareendran Oru Nishkalangan? Based on the story by his son Vishnu, Vinayan weaves it around an honest youngster Hareendran (Indrajith). He is an IT entrepreneur who has made it big starting from scratch. But the people around him scheme to ruin him.

Vinayan tries to make a topical film, but the way he approaches the subject leaves us jaded and numb. The characterisations are flawed. It is a fact that entrepreneurship is looked down upon in this State but in this film it is represented by a few people symbolically.

Hareendran is born rich, but independently sets up a software company with turnover running into crores. He has a friend Gopalakrishnan aka GK (Jayasurya) who stays and works with him. GK is fleecing him, but Hareendran does not seem to care because he treats GK like a brother.

GK has other plans too. He wants to be the Executive Director of the company and ultimately own the company. For this purpose, he implements a scheme, which leads to his murder. Hareendran is the first accused for the murder. The court acquits him due to lack of evidence, but the media and the general public has already decided that he is the murderer.

It is not as simple as it is written about. The film is actually teeming with characters and subplots that are of no consequence to the main story. You just helplessly wait for the things to move forward.

Indrajith as Hareendran lacks involvement. He seems to be out of place as a business tycoon. Jayasurya on the other hand repeats his villainy act carried over from Classmates and Arabikatha. His character seems to be improvised on the spot. Manikuttan as the inspired youngster with socialist leanings and Bhama as the daughter of a rich industrialist give the scope of conflict in the story. Both play the odd romantic lead with a token song for themselves look good;

Jagathy Sreekumar, Cochin Haneefa and Salim Kumar have their moments to spread laughter.

Vinayan may have got his heart in the right place in doing this film, but it lacks the head.

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