Na kahoonga , Na khaane doonga : My quick take on Mamooty’s “One”
A political drama, with an upright CM with a noble intention to weed out corruption from the system may look like a utopian concept of Indian polity. We have seen a similar plot earlier in a commercial potboiler “Nayak” where a common man is made CM for a day. Unlike Nayak, here the principled CM (played by Mamooty) who at the helm of affairs in a coalition government in Kerala gets loggerheads with corrupt ministers of his cabinet, however, find his hands tied to stem the rot as these corrupt ministers can be removed from the post but they remain in the system as they have been elected for a 5-year term.
CM then proposes a Bill of “right to recall” wherein the people who have voted in for a candidate can “recall” him back if found incompetent, corrupt, and undeserving of the position of power. This bill was defeated by a whopping majority and the steely spined CM has to resign. This political drama is full of the power struggle between the ruling party and the opposition party it does pose some glaring question as to what kind of people we elect. Someone has rightly said that Politicians and diapers need to be changed regularly and for the same reason.
For me it turned out to be a plain vanilla kind of film, it was a movie with a “feel good” message and is well shot and well-directed. I watched it just for handsome Mamooty and he does not disappoint us in the movie. There were few paisa vasool moments in the movie, one where he goes blank as if someone hard formatted his hard disk (brain), and second when in a public gathering he is belittled as “Barbers son” (This is a rip off from Abraham Lincoln’s story when he was belittled by a wealthy senator who reminded Abraham Lincoln that he was a cobbler’s son and his father used to mend shoes of senators father). Mamooty’s looked every bit as a CM, his gait, his walk, his measured talk and a certain kind of stoic ness in persona are simply wow. Even the opposition leader Murali Gopi and other lecherous ministers did a fabulous job.
The movie however had some Rohit Shetty influence wherein the protagonist is introduced in slow-mo where the camera just capturing the well-polished shoes, introducing the Megastar with a huge cutout poster in thunder and lightning, such gimmickry can work well with singhams and Salmans, here it looked out of place.
The best movie on such Political drama and power struggle for me, remains to be “Sinhasan”, a Marathi movie which was based on two Marathi novels by Arun Sadhu. It is a classic movie directed by great Jabbar Patel and it remains as number “ONE” for me.
The movie is available on Netflix with English subtitles.
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