Dominic and the Ladies’ Purse review: Investigative thrillers are par for the course, especially in Malayalam cinema. Mammootty himself has acted in numerous successful ones like Utharam, Oru CBI Diary Kurippu and Kannur Squad. This time around, he teams up with director Gautham Vasudev Menon, who makes his Malayalam directorial debut with Dominic and the Ladies’ Purse. What is of particular interest is how Mammootty chooses to be experimental, and in this, he plays a simple, regular man who has a sort of sad backstory and yet plods on with life. Essaying CI Dominic, the private investigator (PI), Mammootty, aka Mammukka, who was dismissed from the police force for taking bribes allegedly, slips into the role with ease and natural flair. (Also read: Mammootty rejected Dominic and the Ladies’ Purse, reveals Gautham Vasudev Menon: ’20 mins into the narration, he was in’)
The plot of Dominic and the Ladies’ Purse
The posters of Dominic’s services are plastered all over Kochi, similar to the posters of magician P James, which we found at one point all across Chennai. Living in an extremely neglected, dingy apartment, the PI owes rent money to his landlady, Mrs Madhuri (Viji Venkatesh), showing that the need for money makes him pursue all sorts of cases, including cheating husbands. He considers himself an ace investigator and arrogantly lectures his new assistant, Vignesh (Gokul Suresh), on the need for ‘observation and concentration’. However, on Vignesh’s first day, as he’s teaching him these methods, Dominic himself gets his observations wrong and admits that there can be an error margin of 20% in deductions.
One day, Mrs Madhuri finds a ladies’ purse at the hospital and convinces Dominic to take up the case, stating that she would waive off the rent he owed her. The PI takes the bait, and he and Vignesh set off on this investigative trail only to find that the girl, Pooja, to whom the purse belongs to is missing. As he doggedly pursues the case, travelling across Kerala and Tamil Nadu, larger pieces of the complex puzzle emerge, drawing him deeper. What happened to Pooja? What is the whole story? Does Dominic solve this complicated case?
Mammootty is near flawless
Mammootty’s characterisation is spot on, and it’s evident that Gautham Menon and Dr Neeraj Rajan spent a lot of time getting every nuance and quirk right. Dominic’s sarcasm, dry sense of humour, imperfectness and the sadness underneath his causal demeanour comes through in the scenes as he interacts with the other characters, especially Vignesh and Mrs Madhuri. The PI is portrayed as a regular man, and you easily connect with him – he’s a man who lost his job, is divorced, has financial issues and a dog he’s forced to take care of. But Dominic also shows us that while he can solve the cases that people bring to him, he can’t get his own house in order, literally and figuratively.
The issue lies in the writing and the narration of the story and the sub-plots. The attempt to create a Holmes-Watson with Dominic and Vignesh doesn’t really succeed as Vignesh is made to look like a rich fanboy with no detective skills or mind of his own. The film’s pace is extremely slow and tests your patience in some parts, like the unnecessary songs or the badly choreographed fights, for instance. You wish the director would just get on with the investigation. There are some red herrings and subversions thrown in the form of various characters, but some of these scenes are tedious.
An investigative thriller should be gripping and keep you engaged at every turn, and this was amiss in this flick. Having said that, there are sparks of brilliance throughout the film, and the final twist was good but perhaps a tad too late to redeem its flaws.
The character of Nandita, too, has been well-written, and Sushmitha Bhat holds her own, especially in the scenes with Mammootty in the second half. But the other performances essayed by actors like Siddique, Vineeth Sreenivasan, Lena and Shine Tom Chacko are not compelling enough, and they just lit in and out just to take the story forward. Viji Venkatesh (who plays Mrs Madhuri) also seemed out of place in this movie.
The editing of the movie by Anthony was choppy (e.g. when it cuts to intermission in the middle of a fight), but Darbuka Siva’s music, for the most part, was apt for the film.
73-year-old Mammootty is the star of the film in every sense and has delivered a stellar performance in this average investigative thriller. If there is a sequel to Dominic and the Ladies’ Purse, one hopes that director Gautham Vasudev Menon writes it himself and writes a better script to raise the bar numerous notches higher.
