In Pawan Kumar’s Dhoomam, Avinash (Fahadh Faasil), the marketing genius of a tobacco company, proposes that they make an anti-smoking ad that people would actually want to watch – and slyly promote smoking through it. The idea behind Dhoomam seems to be loosely based on this thought. A thriller about the ill-effects of smoking that would catch the audience’s attention. Except, there is nothing sly or subtle about the messaging.
This is a 2-hour 23-minute drill on how smoking can kill you, delivered in the breathless fashion of a lecturer who is trying to cover the entire syllabus before the bell rings. Pawan, known for experimental Kannada thrillers like Lucia (2013) and U Turn (2016), makes his Malayalam debut with Dhoomam – and one has to wonder how much was lost in translation.
The film begins with a Chinese prisoner who kills an Indian soldier with a bomb that’s implanted inside his body. The plot thread that’s dangled in front of us intersects with the lives of Avinash and his wife Diya (Aparna Balamurali) on a rainy night. The couple finds themselves in danger and is forced to follow the seemingly random instructions of an invisible man.
The nonlinear plot goes back and forth in time, cutting to the past when Avinash and Diya meet, his quick career growth, and growing conflict about the work he does, and the present, where they’re running from a frightening enemy. Roshan Mathew plays Sid, Avinash’s greedy boy boss, while Vineeth plays his equally avaricious uncle, Praveen. You can’t point a finger at any of the performances and call it bad, but none of them is compelling either. Fahadh is adequately frenzied, Vineeth breezes through the sore loser act, Aparna asks question after question like she’s the host of Kaun Banega Crorepati, and Roshan has to watch out or he’s going to be typecast as Mr Twisty who is in charge of making all the big reveals at the end.
The writing is, at best, sketchy and nobody behaves like they’ve actually been inside a boardroom at any point in their lives. Take the scene when the big people at TTC (a not-so-subtle reference to ITC, a market leader of the tobacco industry in India) are discussing smoking ads. “Hey guys, do you know, every time someone smokes in a film, there’s a disclaimer against smoking that appears on the screen,” says a senior member, and the disclaimer appears as he’s saying it. How did anyone make it to the boardroom at TTC without knowing this? Yes, we know that the film is trying to call our attention to the disclaimer, but it is so out-of-character for a person to be announcing it in this scene that all it does is ruin our suspension of disbelief.
For a while, we’re invested in what’s happening to Avinash and Diya. When the screenplay turns into a relentless anti-smoking campaign though, our interest…well, vanishes in smoke. Dhoomam could have been a gripping film about cutthroat corporate greed, and how the tobacco lobby operates. It could have been an effective film about addiction (Theevandi was moderately successful at depicting this) and how tobacco ruins families. It could have been a medical thriller about an oncologist who – never mind. Enough to say that there is no new insight you gain from the film. It has only what the compulsory government ad at the beginning has to say, just a glossier, high-end version of it.
There’s a ticking time bomb in Dhoomam, people get shot, there are crying children, and vulnerable old people, and there is even a baby who dies – all of it is meant to push you to the edge of your seat and squeeze a tear while you’re there, but you’re left unmoved because the lecture has gone on for far too long. By the time the ‘intriguing’ ending arrives, we have turned passive. And there’s nothing more injurious to the health of a film.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the producers or any other members of its cast and crew.
Sowmya Rajendran writes on gender, culture, and cinema. She has written over 25 books, including a nonfiction book on gender for adolescents. She was awarded the Sahitya Akademi’s Bal Sahitya Puraskar for her novel Mayil Will Not Be Quiet in 2015. Views expressed are the author's own.