Kuttran Purindhavan review: soul – stirring and heart – stopping conflict between duty, responsibility, love and morality

Kuttran Purindhavan review: soul – stirring and heart – stopping conflict between duty, responsibility, love and morality

‘Kuttran Purindhavan’ - written and directed by Selvamani Muniyyapan, guilt and grief run as recurrent and overarching themes in a whodunnit investigation plot that centers on a complex case of missing girls in a village.

The story follows Bhaskaran (the incredibly brilliant Pasupathy), a worker at a medical center, who is inadvertently thrown into a dilemmatic scenario of morality conflicted with guilt when a little girl, Mercy,  in his neighborhood goes missing and her father, Solomon,  is found dead in mysterious circumstance.

Over the seven episodes, Kuttran unfolds as a slow burn social thriller, peeling off layers of secrets with non-linear flashbacks as Bhaskaran finds himself pushed into the vortex of a case where he is fraught with guilt and moral ambiguities.

Director Selvamani Muniyappan intricately examines how normal people would behave in grappling and extraordinary scenarios. Kuttran is rooted in its small-town milieu, and the suspense gets more exciting with the entry of the investigating officer, Gautham (played by Vidaarth), while the drama gathers heft with the growing desperation of Mercy’s mother, Esther (National award-winning Lakshmi Priya Chandramouli) for her missing daughter.

The show however is not perfect and feels stretched at times including a flabby climactic fight but it’s the performances that pulls is audience through the heartstrings. Pasupathy is in spectacular form and get effortlessly gets under the skin of the character. Known for displaying emotive ability, he wears modesty like a crown and acts like a hub who draws all characters towards him.

As an inspector whose fate draws similar lines as Bhaskaran, Vidaarth shapes his character with a heartfelt honestly.  Laksmi Priya is brilliant in her part, and she plays the complex parts with Bhaskaran and his wife (Lizzie Anthony) with an arresting ease.