Kerala   

Rivalry on the track

The film focusses on a college campus and its aspirant athletes

Speed

In Kerala, sports, athletics in particular, are taken seriously. It is the land of sprint queen P.T. Usha and the long jumper Anju Bobby George.

But watching actors past their prime, at least on the track, slugging it out as adolescents do can be disheartening.

Thirty-something actors acting out the exuberance of sprinting cannot be digested. Arjunan (Dileep) is constrained to take admission in a sports college, as he feels morally responsible to raise a few lakh rupees, by winning the prize money in a big competition, for treatment of an adolescent Arun (Annikuttan), who nearly gets paralysed owing to his carelessness.

Athletes

In the college, Arjunan is the best among all, which is not appreciated by other aspirant athletes such as Tinu (Riaz Khan).

Gauri (Gazala), sister of Rahul (Madhu Warrier), another student, starts admiring Arjunan, but that is misunderstood and complications develop. Others try to create bad blood among Arjunan, Gauri and Rahul.

The film ends on a happy note. The film falters as the story swings from here to there.

Competition

The director Jaisurya, who has written the script, story and dialogue, has not focussed on the fierce competition between Arjunan and Tinu. Also, justice has not been done to the miserable story of Arun. It fails to generate excitement on the track or sympathy for a physically challenged character. The campus atmospherics have also not been depicted well.

Dileep looks anything but agile, fit-as-fiddle sprinter. Riaz Khan also suffers from that drawback. The cast includes Jagathy Sreekumar, Salim Kumar, Bindu Panikker, Saikumar, Captain Raju and Vijayaraghavan. Songs written by Girish Puttancherry and tuned by Deepak Dev are lilting.

A Correspondent

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