‘John Doe’ movie review: Madhumita finds her footing with a neat, effective thriller

Arjun Das and Sanchana Natarajan in a still from ‘John Doe’

They say we are what our fathers leave behind. The latest Tamil film John Doe revolves around fathers of all kinds — one who fed shame and toxicity to his child, one who failed to stand by his daughter, and one who looks after a childlike wife. Even when they are absent, or through that very absence, some of these fathers keep shaping their children’s lives.

Which is why, even though John Doe revolves around the mysterious murder of an eight-year-old boy, director Madhumita begins her story elsewhere — with another boy child in another period who grows up listening to his terrorising, toxic police officer father humiliate him daily. The child can’t eat as much as he wants to, can’t score anything less than first rank, and isn’t even allowed to cry at his mother’s funeral.

As fate would have it, Chandru (Arjun Das) becomes a police officer, a Kerala Police Sub-Inspector in Kadampuzha. He has achieved what his father said he couldn’t, and yet Chandru’s father (Badava Gopi is a great casting choice; his voice becomes a character), even posthumously, has his clutches firmly on his son’s psyche, constantly chiding and shaming him, especially when he feels low or makes mistakes. Credit to Madhumita for how John Doe becomes the story of Chandru proving his father wrong by becoming a good police officer.

It is also about figuring out who he is. He knows he isn’t the person the voice in his head keeps portraying him to be; if so, who is he? In fact, even the film’s title alludes to this. ‘John Doe’ — as a coroner explains — is a term used in American law enforcement to refer to an unidentified male body or patient (‘Jane Doe’ is for a female). By attempting to identify and seek justice for this young John Doe, who was killed by drowning in a lake in Kadampuzha, Chandru is also identifying who he himself is and seeking justice for the child in him who was slowly killed.

Arjun Das in a still from ‘John Doe’

Simultaneously, we follow a new family arriving in Kurinjimedu, Tamil Nadu: Darshana (Srishti Y), a widow, her eight-year-old son Hriday (Nirav S), and teenage daughter Lakshmi, a.k.a. Lucky (Zaara Vineet Chandhokhe). One evening, Hriday goes missing, after which Inspector of Police A Rao (Sanchana Natarajan) begins a missing-person investigation. By initially showing the drowned corpse of a boy who resembles Hriday in Kadampuzha, Madhumita ensures that every additional shot of Hriday, a normal child who just wanted a dog in his new, spacious house, disturbs you. The rest of the film shuttles between Kurinjimedu and Kadampuzha, and these worlds collide when Chandru unearths disturbing details.

First and foremost, if you believe the sole worth of a whodunit or investigative thriller lies in how cleverly it executes its climactic twist or reveals the killer’s identity, John Doe may compel you to rethink. A genre fan would see the pre-intermission twist coming from afar, and the film hardly tries to hide its killer. Though it mostly gets its casting right, in a whodunit, when you see a familiar face amidst a group of non-actors, you tend to look closer, which spoils the fun. A more experienced genre filmmaker could have done it differently to drive home the fact that anyone can commit crimes.

Such predictability aside, John Doe would compel your attention and keep you hooked throughout its runtime. Madhumita excels in the little moments between the dramatic spikes in the narrative. The nuances and the sensitive writing are what you might take home with you. Watch how a couple takes the news of the death of their child. Their son had gone missing five years ago, and Madhumita tells you what the psyche of such parents would be like — they don’t scream and wail as you might expect; the mother, who had held on to hope, struggles far more than the father, who had long accepted grief. Similarly, you will see a child suffering from trauma wanting a family member to accompany him into a psychologist’s room — because, to him, the doctor too is a stranger, and he doesn’t wish to go anywhere alone with him after what has happened to him. Now, also see how sensibly the psychologist (Karthik Kumar) behaves, in contrast to the hot-blooded cops. We wish more filmmakers had this emotional aptitude.

The film’s genre pleasures include how Chandru and A Rao, a unique buddy-cop duo, also become metaphorical parental figures to the children of this world. Chandru is so attached to the case that he puts his career in jeopardy; even if she appears stoic, Rao, too, takes this quite personally. Just as you begin to wonder if this is the typical good-cop-bad-cop routine — where the good cop is usually more intelligent and the bad cop more brawny — a superb action scene set in a lodge tells you these two truly complete each other. One follows ‘instincts’, while the other packs a punch — you can never settle on who is who. It also helps that these two actors look the part; Arjun moves like a cop finding his footing, while Sanchana, despite some occasional theatricality, shows immense potential.

Of course, the film takes some liberties with that idea in the second half that don’t work. More subtlety could have helped the film in general, like when it keeps underlining Lucky’s bratty, hormonal teenage personality (here, a line about the goth subculture feels stereotypical, given that the subculture is now far beyond its conventional association with darkness and death).

You are also asked to extend some cinematic liberties for a few nitty-gritty details — like how you don’t understand how the car plunged into the lake in Kadampuzha at that speed, or how Chandru failed to notice the culprit. Also, this could have been a far more atmospheric thriller, had the film taken these characters through these hillside towns more often instead of the few locations the plot circles (cutting between two similar-looking police stations also disturbs the immersion at times).

Sanchana Natarajan in a still from ‘John Doe’

Now, if this film still manages to steer through all these flaws, it is because of how resolute the writing feels in giving its viewers an engaging experience. Which is why, when I realised that John Doe might have a sequel, I wasn’t all that sceptical (given it is a trend to end films with a hint at a sequel to aid potential franchising). It seems like Chandru and Rao are just starting, and Madhumita is testing the waters in a genre she is not too used to making films in.

In cinema, it is unfair how filmmakers are often weighed against their last film. But I must confess that having two Madhumita directorials released in the same month meant that I still carried the aftertaste of Love Always before entering John Doe. You might too, if you watched that JioHotstar series. However, all works of art deserve an objective, discerning audience, and this John Doe deserves its attention.

Contrary to its title, this film isn’t suffering from an identity crisis. It knows what it wants to be, and it puts in the effort to become that. Such cinema is worth rooting for any day.

John Doe is currently running in theatres

Tamil cinema / Indian cinema / entertainment (general) / The Hindu MetroPlus