We have a novel character as the lead protagonist in ‘Dafedar’. A dafedar is someone who works as a security personnel and is an appendix of a bygone era, characterized by their unique uniform and docile mannerisms. However this is all the novelty that the movie has to offer. The plot is way too haggard and insipid to make any kind of impact whatsoever. Tini Tom plays the dafedar in the movie. The rest of the characters seems to be there for the sake of it.
What works against the movie severely is that director and scenarist Johnson Estappan has not been able to build around the dafedar character whom he calls Ayyappan. The issues that the movie tries to convey are hardly convincing. Ayyapan is a retired dafedar who still abides by his official role, so much so that he still goes to the office premises in his customary uniform and tries to help the people who arrive with complaints. The director has tried to center the conflict of the movie around Ayyapan and his sons in a sort of traditional values v/s modern selfishness angle.
The sons are portrayed as leading a lavish life which Ayyapan finds distasteful. Ayyapan’s docility and servility irks the sons too and they find his daily excursions to the office post retirement meaningless. The problem here is that one does not feel either sympathy or empathy for Ayyapan which undoes the intended effect. A little while into the movie and the script totally flatters, with an unconvincing entry of a young care taker played by Malavika who seems to have been included just for the sake of it.
In the middle of all this Tini Tom holds his own. But there is only a little an actor can do with such a shoddy script. Also, his almost Gandhian uprightness in characterization throughout the movie is a little irritating. Malavika is ill suited for the role. With a story this ineffective, talking about the technicalities is hardly relevant. ‘Dafedar’ did have scope considering the novelty of the character, but fails to build around it ultimately making it a movie worth giving a skip.
