Chatha Pacha: The Ring of Rowdies Review

If you have visited a theatre to watch any Indian movie in the past month or so, you must have watched an instantly attention-grabbing trailer of the Malayalam movie ‘Chatha Pacha: The Ring of Rowdies’. The action choreography, the visuals and the music in the trailer were so good and rightly so, it did command the attention of moviegoers. The debutant director, Adwaith Nayar, was successful in not just grabbing the attention of the audience with the trailer but he also impressed bigwigs across the film industries in India with the trailer. The film was distributed by Dharma Productions, in Hindi, Mythri Movie Makers in Telugu, Dulquer Salmaan distributed it in Malayalam and PVRINOX Pictures distributed it in Tamil and Kannada. After raising good expectations with the trailer, the film was released in the theatres today. Did the film meet the expectations? Did the debutant director come up with an engaging film? How did the WWE backdrop fit into a film made in India? Let’s figure it out with a detailed analysis.

What is it about?

The brothers, Savio(Arjun Ashokan) and Thomas(Ishan Shoukath) along with Vetrivel(Roshan Mathew), share a common interest in wrestling and are called ‘Walter Boys’ by the people in Kochi, Kerala. After living away for a few years from Savio and Vetrivel, Thomas returns to Kochi and gets to know that Savio is looking for a new job and Vetrivel is in jail. He convinces Savio to open a wrestling club and form a team. The club instantly becomes a huge success among the people in Kochi and the success of the club, irks a few people. What challenges do Savio & Thomas face after opening the club? What troubles Vetrivel create after he gets released from jail? Forms the rest of the story.

Performances:

Arjun Ashokan, Roshan Mathew and Ishan Shoukath, did justice to their roles by delivering good performances. However, Arjun Ashokan got a better role compared to the other two and he made complete use of it with his performance and screen presence.

Vishak Nair in the role of antagonist did well with his performance. The actors who played the roles of four members in the fight club, delivered superb performances. The little girl, Vedhika Sreekumar, in the role of Rosamma, is a show stealer. She delivered a very cute and confident performance and was able to generate laughs at a few places.

Mammootty did a cameo appearance during the climax of the film. Although it’s good to see him in a cameo, the look and design for his role should have been much better. He looked so out of place throughout his cameo appearance in the film.

Technicalities:

Cinematography by Anend C. Chandran is stunning and is one of the major positives of the film. The slick visuals and the colour grading and the frames throughout the film, looked very good. Songs scored by, Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy, are good and the background score by Mujeeb Majeed, suited the theme and mood of the film perfectly. Especially, the background score during the action episodes was top-notch.

Editing by Praveen Prabhakar is good. The cuts used for the action episodes were first-rate. The film lost track in second-half but it was due to the writing but has nothing to do with the editor. The action choreography deserves special appreciation. All the action episodes were composed and shot very well. Let’s talk about the story writer and the director, Adwaith Nayar and the screenplay writer, Sanoop Thykoodam, in the analysis section.

Positives:

1.⁠ ⁠WWE Backdrop
2.⁠ ⁠Action Blocks
3.⁠ ⁠Cinematography

Negatives:

1.⁠ ⁠Second Half
2.⁠ ⁠Lack of Emotional Depth
3.⁠ ⁠Predictable Narration

Analysis:

Malayalam filmmakers are known for taking interesting backdrops and blending them very well with intriguing plots and engaging screenplays. Just like many of his colleagues, the debutant Malayalam film director, Adwaith Nayar, took an interesting backdrop of ‘Costume Wrestling(WWE)’ and tried to come up with a slick action comedy film. However, while he scored distinction marks for selecting a unique backdrop and stunningly executing the action episodes, he failed big time in coming up with a proper story, conflict point and in establishing an emotional connection. A little more care in writing the story and screenplay, could have made ‘Chatha Pacha’, truly a memorable film. Especially, the writing and narration in the second half, lost track completely.

WWE as a sport has an immense following in India among the youngsters. It looked like the director did enough research to understand the nuances of the sport and designed the action episodes. An action episode with three blocks and an action episode at the start of the second half, both in the backdrop of WWE, were designed and executed superbly. Both these action episodes were very entertaining and are sure to be liked by the action lovers, especially the WWE enthusiasts. The film took off on a good note and until the end of the first half, the proceedings unfold without any major hiccups.

The real problem with the film starts in the second half. Due to the lack of a strong conflict point, the required emotional depth was not established. All we get to see in the second half, are the action episodes, one after the other without any emotional connection. The director had a good chance to establish emotional drama, using Roshan Mathew’s character but for some reason, the director wrote his role blandly. The director also had a chance to end the film excitingly by using the cameo appearance of Mammootty but the cameo did not work as expected. The look design for Mammootty’s role was substandard and he looked so out of place throughout his appearance in the film.

Overall, the backdrop of Chatha Pacha, has tremendous potential to become a trend-setter but due to the poor writing, predictable and unexciting narration, it eventually ended up as an ‘All style with no substance’ film with superbly executed action episodes.

Final Verdict – Only ‘Action’. No ‘Emotion’

Rating – 2.5/5