The title 'Chess', reminds you are at something meant to play with brain. The only thing that is missing in the film is but broadly logical brain work for the plot. And otherwise it is a fairly made thriller, quite watchable if you don't go on and spoil the party by looking for logic in the film. Chess is for those true blue thrillers and action movie cravers.
Rated as UA by the sensors, the film tells disorder, anarchy and a handful of murder scenes amidst a not so lenient story. The narrative moves back and forth in time in the first half establishing Vijayakrishanan (Dileep), a pathetically placed youth, all set to vanquish the enemies who eliminated his family. Vijayakrishanan was just like any other youth of our circuit, but belonging to a family that has for long been associated with fine arts. His mother runs Kalakshethra, an institution that teaches music and dance. Hailing from this background, Vijayakrishanan lands in the rough as he is illegitimate son of his father krishnadaas IPS (Saikumar) who beckons him and his mother to live with him in his last days. But the fate played ugly with them as a mafia headed by Krishnadas's cousin and Police commissioner Devarajan (Vijayaraghavan) eliminates all, in the seek of their family fortunes. A brutally tortured Vijayakrishanan is left nowhere between life and death.
On his way back to life, Vijayakrishanan pretends as a blind man and he charts his own course, to confront the major mafia that includes Police Commissioner Devarajan, Police Superintendent Abraham Koshi (Bheeman Raghu), Circle Inspector Sarath Chandran (Babu Raj) and Crime Branch Officer Swaminathan who were all the reason's for his life's folly. The youngster with supports from Vasu (Mohan Jose), a former naxalette and a police constable (Jagathy) is pitted against the high and the mighty. He uses his wits as in a game of chess to counter his opponents. The film goes on unveiling the chances for life and survival of the fittest. And as our mind set supports vanquishing evil by evil, being part and parcel of our good guy hero package, every hard killings are thus successfully explained. Depending on your mental makeup, some of the hard to digest moments can also be let free from disturbing your sensibility as commercial concessions.
The film visibly crippled by budget at times, don't lack the slickness that we come to expect from its presentation in the hoardings. When you walk out of the theatre, you hear people discussing how each halves differed from the other, as the first goes on with the melodramatic flashbacks while the entire second half is more gripping as Salim kumar and Harisree Ashokan makes pretty appearances to ease the show. Dileep in his attempt to change his image of a next door boy appears macho and succeed to some limits in being the protagonist of a revengeful thriller. Bhavana as Dr.Radhika, has not much to do apart from steering a short love life flash back of the protogonist. Vijayaraghavan as Devaraajan and Ashish Vidyarthy as Swamynaathan have also raked in worth mentioning performances.
Debutant director Raj Babu does not disappoints you, with fast takings as his Guru Joshy, to make a pacy flick. Scriptwriters Sibi.K. Thomas - Uday Krishna has also came up with a meaty script to provide a non linear narration and necessary thrills. Jayalakshmi, Rani, Priyanka, Bheeman Raghu and Santhosh share the credits of the other casts. The film has also a passable song by Berny Ignasious penned by Vayalar Sarathchandra Varma which appears early in the first half.
As a regular cinegoer, you will be thankful enough to see Dileep bounce back from the clutters of his last doublerole 'Pachakuthira'. But here, he is also in a multifaceted role, in and loosely out of his strong points, but performed with ease. And
