Review: Angels is forgettable

Angels has a disappointing story and shoddy film-making, says Paresh C Palicha.

These days, television has a solution for everything and debutante director Jean Markose uses this premise in the murder mystery Angels.

There was some hype around the film as Joy Mathew is appearing in a priest's garb for the first time after Amen.

Indrajith plays a high ranking police officer, Hameem Haider, who gets injured in a fight sequence at the beginning of the film. He then spends several months recuperating.

He was investigating a controversial case before the shoot-out, but now he is put in charge of training juniors in sharp shooting.

Joy Mathew is Father Varghese Punyalan. We first see him undergoing a health check-up and the doctor warns him of dire consequences if he does not take care. He mockingly responds that death is all around him and he would not be surprised if he was crucified.

Asha Sharath’s career defining role in Drishyam is still fresh in people's memory. Here she portrays Haritha Menon, a TV journalist hosting a popular TV show, 3rd Eye, which refreshes public memory about unsolved criminal cases.

The story unfolds as the paths of these three people cross.

Haritha and her bosses are worried that the TRP of her show will dwindle if they repeatedly keep showing cases of missing children.

That’s when she remembers the peculiar serial murders of three women killed in similar fashion and whose bodies were left on a tombstone in a cemetery by the killer. She starts researching the case. One of her classmates is in charge of the case so she can access the case diary easily and even invite him on the show.

Punyalan contacts her with a request to introduce his yet to be published book on her show. The book is, in fact, his confession of murdering the three women. He confesses it on the live programme without fearing the consequences.

Then he says he will reveal the details only if Hameem Haider is with him in the next episode. Hameen had been handling this case before he was injured.

All this happens in the first half of this two-hour-long film and we sit tight in the interval thinking that things can only get better in the second half.

But what follows is a disappointing story and shoddy film-making. Angels is a forgettable experience.

Rediff Rating: