Checkmate Review | An Atrocity Inflicted on Native Malayalis by NRI Malayalis

In one of the interviews for Checkmate, I heard Anoop Menon talking about why he decided to do the film eventually. His wife told him that as he is anyway doing a lot of trashy movies these days, why don’t he just do this one too? Well, the end result of that push from his better half has only resulted in the creation of a film that can damage your brain cells. Checkmate is basically an amateur short film that got good funds to enhance its production quality. With a generic story getting tortured by silly screenplay experiments, the movie from Ratish Sekhar is easily the best thing you can recommend to your enemy.

Phillip Kurien, the head of a pharma company that is facing allegations of illegal drug trials, is our central character. His partner Jessy is trying to help him from all the legal troubles by doing her bit. What we ultimately see in the film is the history of these two, the people connected with them, and what they had to go through because of their inhuman actions.

It actually took a while for me to understand the whole story because the film’s screenplay has this nature of going after characters pointlessly for a long time. The narrative shifts from 3 months ago, 12 months ago, the day of the kidnap, 5 minutes before the kidnap, etc., in a very pretentious way to make the audience feel that some sophisticated filmmaking is happening. But the dialogues, be it the Malayalam ones or the English ones, are so theatric that some of them reminded me of that Vipranasam short film. Looking at the way the writing gets lost in unnecessary subplots, you would feel like poking the director to cut the chase and come to the point multiple times during the film.

Anoop Menon appears in multiple looks in the film, and the very first one reminded me of that deleted scene in the climax of Mohanlal’s Mr. Fraud. The guy who sat behind me was saying, “What happened to Khureshi-Ab’raam?” The name of the character might well be Phillip Kurien, but Anoop Menon makes sure that Phillip will act like Anoop Menon. This is perhaps the second misleading thing Lal has been a part of after that rummy ad. Rekha Harindran, who makes her debut through the film, has won the Kerala Film Critics Award for her performance in this movie. Being someone who reviews films, I just want to clarify that I have no association with that organization. There are a lot of debut actors in the film, and I think they all have this hope that the audience would applaud them, like how families root for kids in kindergarten during the annual day performance.

The story, screenplay, music, cinematography, and direction of the film are handled by Ratish Sekhar, and by the end of it, you should feel that he shouldn’t have burdened himself with all those responsibilities. The camera movements are so poor that even the short films made in Kerala with minimal budget have better visual sensibility. Shot division and camera angles are so bizarre. The visuals change from a medium close-up to a low-angle one in split seconds without any motivation, and the editing done by Prejish Prakash with far too many unnecessary cuts would make you think that he was getting paid for the number of cuts. There is a fight sequence towards the end inside a boxing academy, and the conversations that happen after the goons realize they have kidnapped the wrong person is unintentionally comical.

Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you’re a director. This is a quote by the great James Cameron. What he forgot to mention was that show it to your friends and family and don’t release it in theaters.