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Kingston Movie Review: There is a quaint Christian fishing hamlet. There is a raging sea at their footsteps. The villagers haven’t gone fishing in their waters for over two decades. Every single person who has gone out to the sea has come back dead. There is a curse. There is a reasoning. There are overarching themes involving regret, retribution, and redemption. There is a romance track that, thankfully, exists in the periphery. There is a to-and-fro between timelines that moves from the 80s to the 2020s to the 2010s to the 60s to the 80s, and you know the drill. There are multiple backstories for each principal player of this story. There is a folklore. There is a fantasy element, and then… there’s a sea creature. And yet, for the longest time, GV Prakash Kumar‘s latest film, Kingston, seems to move nowhere, and this proves to be the film’s biggest undoing.
Kingston (GV Prakash Kumar) is an unscrupulous right-hand man of Thomas (Sabumon Abdusamad) the head honcho of Tuticorin city, and the godfather of the village of Thoovathur. The once-flourishing fishing hamlet is a rundown village with occupants afraid to go to the sea to pursue their livelihoods, and wary of leaving the place they call home. They are stuck in limbo, and Kingston’s focus is to buy a boat, and take it out to the sea and dispell the myth of the cursed sea. He thinks the fear of the unknown is an orchestrated ploy to keep the village in penury. But he is someone who has no time to sit back and empathise with the plight of his brethren caught between the sea and a myth. That is why when the wheels are finally set in motion, and Kingston has a reason to become the saviour of the village, it feels rather forced. Of course, the writing brings in a character to evoke that sense of rebellion in Kingston, but it is one of the more flatter portions of the film.
In fact, till the interval portion where the film shifts terrains, Kingston is trapped under its own weight of having to cramp up multiple storylines to set the stage for the showdown. It also doesn’t bode well for the narrative that the film takes too long a time to get to the sea creature portions, which is essentially the fulcrum of the entire second half. The filmmaker plays the cards too close to his chest for such a long time that the reveal, which is quite fascinating, doesn’t register the same impact.
Nevertheless points to director Kamal Prakash for ensuring the film doesn’t meander into territories that have no bearing on it. In fact, every subplot of the film does have a decent call back, and connects strongly with whatever unfolds in the final act. But it takes a convoluted way to reach these moments, and the non-linear patterns of edit in certain scenes doesn’t help the film’s case either. What really works in favour of the film is all fitted into the second half that becomes a different beast altogether.
It is here that the film actually progresses, and the characters have something to do other than just exist to be around the protagonist. Be it the Kingston’s friends, played by Antony, Rajesh Balachandran, Arunachaleswaran, and Praveen, or Divyabharathi’s Rose, all of them get their own arcs, and decent ones at that too. The film also makes a rather compelling and convincing sojourn into atmospheric horror, and it is elevated by the eerie visuals, and effective jump scares. Points to the non-compromising showcase of the sea creature, and how it is incorporated into the film. Kingston really works in these portions, and it is because the writing is complemented by the technical wizardry in these portions. The impact of well-orchestrated sequences in the raging seas are really high in Kingston. Points to the VFX team, and the cinematography by Gokul Benoy that gives us a upper deck-side view of the scares on the boat.
Kingston is also a film that doesn’t really ask much of GV Prakash, the actor, and doesn’t test his histrionic talent enough. However, the seemingly forced dialect, and the lack of lip-sync in many of the scenes does act as a deterrent. Divyabharathi and Elango Kumaravel are wasted in rather thankless roles that flatter to deceive. Kingston is actually held together by the strong performances from the supporting actors, including the ever-dependable Chethan and Azhagam Perumal, who play very interesting characters.
In many ways, Kingston has the potential to be more than just a middling film. Give it to us as comics, we might have our own Sinbad the Sailor. Give it to us as a theme park ride, voila! we might have our own Pirates of the Caribbean. There are portions of the film where it is fair to assume it is straight out of Dead Man’s Chest or even At the World’s End instalments of the Pirates of the Caribbean. However, Kamal Prakash and Co choose to treat it as a rather sober film that finds its momentum too late. Nevertheless, as the credits rolled, and there is a sense of satisfaction that the film goes into interesting spaces, it also makes you wonder why this ingenuity was sacrificed at the altar of character development that didn’t register the intended impact.
When things go right, Kingston makes you feel like reading one of those fascinating pulp fiction stories that are not just radical and intriguing, but also knew never to overstay its welcome. But Kingston’s ambition of being a homegrown sea-based creature franchise with just the right amounts of fantasy falls short of achieving folklore lore simply by not backing its own instincts and strengths. Sometimes, for the greater good, someone does need to jump into the sea without a life jacket, and that someone could have been Kingston. If only.
Kingston Movie Cast: GV Prakash Kumar, Divyabharathi, Elango Kumaravel, Sabumon Abdusamad
Kingston Movie Rating: 2.5 stars
Kingston Movie Director: Kamal Prakash
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