Debutante director Vinu Joseph's November Rain is a film that is well-made, but may not prove to be crowd puller. The reasons are diverse. Firstly the film, though well made, doesn't provide us with anything new, i.e., nothing is there which makes the film different from others in the same genre. Secondly, the lead player Arun is someone who hasn't yet proved himself at the box office, and Kerala is a State where people still do not accept new stars that easily. Thirdly the songs don't have in them the power to make the film a hit on their merit.
November Rain tells the story of a young man named Satyanarayanan, the son of honest and daring police officer Krishnamoorthy, who is heading the anti-goonda squad in the city and is bent on eliminating the breed entirely. Satya is an easy going kind of youth who has passed the plus two exams after repeated attempts. He is waiting to be admitted to college and passes his time practising boxing, eating and lazing about.
After he gets admitted to college Satya becomes part of a group that has some indirect connections with some of the henchmen of Majid Ali, a noted criminal and a reckoning force in the city's dreaded underworld. Satya, who appears initially as a silly imbecile, later turns out to be a tough guy and gradually begins to head his gang in the college. Then one day, Satya and his gang clash with goondas brought in by Prabhakaran, the college union chairman. In the course of the fight one of the goondas is stabbed by Satya. This leads to many problems.
Though the victim doesn't die, Satya and gang are forced to go into hiding and talks for compromise begin. The parents of others in Satya's gang come forward to pay money and go in for a compromise. But Krishnamoorthy is a man of principles and he holds that if Satya has done something wrong, he must be punished. Satya somehow comes out of the mess along with his friends. But this marks the beginning of a rift between the father and the son. Satya gradually drifts into the ranks of the underworld. What happens consequently leads to a very touching climax.
For the People fame Arun, who dons the role of Satyanarayanan, does a good job, but like most other actors in Malayalam Cinema, he too is getting stereotyped. It seems that after the earlier Quotation and now November Rain, we can expect only this kind of action films from him. Laloo Aalex as Krishnamoorthy is his usual self. Balaji is good as Majid Ali. Sreejith Ravi as Ali's henchman is also good, but at some junctures he and his character seem to be unnecessarily loud. Geetha as Satya's mother Indira is OK.
Nimisha who plays Satya's beloved Anu doesn't have any kind of appeal. Sajitha Beti as Satya's sister Archana alias Achchu is OK. Niyaz as Pappu and Aniyappan as Sajeevan (both friends and aides of Satya) and Unni Shivapal as Prabhakaran are good. The others in the cast don't make much of an impression. Of the songs, "Raavin nenjil theeram thedum ..." gels with the theme and is shot very well. The other songs are OK, but not outstanding. Cinematography, editing and art-work are in sync with the theme.
November Rain is on the whole well-made and the performances of the main actors are satisfactory, but the film doesn't offer anything new. It moves along predictable lines and we have seen many such stories earlier on the screen. One wonders why our filmwallahs are obsessed with the name Satya for characters that drift into the underbelly of organized crime for various reasons. [Remember the Suresh Krishna-directed Tamil film Satya (1988) starring Kamalhassan, and the Ram Gopal Varma-directed Hindi film Satya (1998) starring Chakravarthy?]
The script of November Rain has been worked out well. The inclusion of the hooded figures used very symbolically to refer to changes in Satya's life and his fate is good, though it seems more like a theatrical device than a cinematic innovation, and doesn't have much of an impact.
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