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Parimala & Co. (Tamil, 2026)
Written and Directed by: Pandiraaj
Even though the movie felt kind of draggy and did not get a lot of good reviews online, I think there is a lot to munch on in its subject matter. The filmmakers think killing is a funny business. Murder and getting away scot-free, it seems, is now a necessary living skill. This movie is just about all that. More and more movies these days tend to forward the idea that murder solves all problems and getting away is their happy ending.
These days, the way I see it, nobody needs the long arm of the law to take care of us anymore. Increasingly, we see a compulsion to take the law into our own hands. In fact, the public's general opinion is that the police are our enemies, corrupt and are there just to make things more difficult for honest men. There is increasing distrust of public institutions too. Thanks to easy access to news and brutal dissection by the Fourth Estate, this mistrust is reaching a tipping point.
This, in essence, is the reason for Gen Z-led Cockroach Janta Party's agitation in Delhi. The younger generation in India has seen many policy foul-ups, the latest being the NEET examinations, the entrance exams to medical school. After repeated leakages of examination questions annually, the Government of India decided to tighten security around the setting, printing, and distribution of the papers. Use of QR codes, security clearances, and transportation by military planes, normally used to transport military tanks, proved futile. Leakages still happened at the highest levels. Proofs of leaked question papers were sent to the police, and close to a score of officials have been arrested.
The whole medical education system is a fraud with interference from politicians, mafia and officials within the administration. What can the helpless public who have wasted time, hard-earned money and savings to sit for the exams only to have been cheated do? Take to the streets!
Murder is also becoming a natural way to solve one's problems. When a girl is forced to marry someone whom she does not fancy, what does she do? Get the boyfriend to finish the suitor, of course. Life has become so cheap. The fear of embarrassment of doing such a dastardly act seems more damaging than being caught for murder. The generation is under the impression that any crime can be a perfect crime.
In this movie, a closely knit middle-class family of four- a father, mother and two college-going daughters- are living, minding their own business. The father is mild-mannered, the mother is strict, while the daughters are different like night and day. The elder one is street-smart and outspoken, the younger one being soft-spoken and timid.
A local goon shows interest in the younger daughter and is constantly harassing and stalking her. Everyone in the family cannot stand the sight of him but seems helpless to get rid of him. One day, the guy is found dead by the dumpster. That is the beginning of each other member of knocking the bad dude. To top it all, the brothers-in-law on either side of the parents are also suspected to be in cahoots with someone in the family to just kill off that guy.
In this confusion, the police and the mother of the dead man go around in circles trying to pin the killer. The father takes matters into his own hands by trying to protect his wife and daughter from getting caught, since he assumes they did it, and he tries to imitate the father figure in the box-office-shattering movie Drysham (Papanasam). The end result is a hilarious comedy.
Somehow, doing the right thing, like acting as a good citizen and reporting crime, is not the right thing to do. Instead, it is covering your own family, being an accomplice and covering up for those who share your DNA. This is what we should be teaching our younger generation. The idea of a perfect crime is real, it seems!
Farouk Gulsara (asokansham@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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