Malayalam storytelling has all the time had a knack for sneaking beneath the pores and skin of acquainted genres, peeling away their predictable surfaces, and exposing one thing far stranger, funnier, and extra humane. With The Chronicles of the 4.5 Gang, now streaming on SonyLIV, Krishand takes the well-worn gangster saga and turns it inside out. What emerges shouldn’t be the neat chronicle of against the law syndicate however a cracked mirror reflecting reminiscence, mischief, and the way in which bizarre males flip themselves into legends.
The premise is deceptively simple. An ageing Arikuttan (Sanju Sivram), now weary and reflective, hires the author Maithreyan (Jagadish) to doc his life story. However what begins as a biographical train rapidly collapses right into a carnival of half-truths, exaggerations, and embellished recollections. Via Arikuttan’s narration, we meet the gang of his youth: Althaf (Niranj Maniyanpilla Raju), Maniyan (Shambhu), Kanji (Sreenath Babu), and Moonga (Sachin Joseph), the “half” within the title, owing to his dwarfism. Collectively, these 5 boys stumble from the slums of Thiruvananthapuram into the messy underworld of petty thefts, scams, and eventual notoriety.
What makes the collection fascinating shouldn’t be what occurs however how it’s instructed. Arikuttan is a deeply unreliable narrator, and Krishand seizes on this conceit with infectious glee. Scenes continuously undercut themselves. A bravado-laced anecdote would possibly immediately deflate beneath Maithreyan’s pointed questions. A childhood escapade is replayed with such stylised exaggeration that it looks like folklore quite than truth. The strain between actuality and reminiscence runs like a present by means of the present, reminding us that gangster sagas are as a lot self-mythologies as they’re histories.
The performances lean into this playful instability. Sanju Sivram carries the present with a duality that shifts between youthful conceitedness and the rueful gravity of an older man. As Arikuttan in his prime, he’s all stressed swagger, his eyes scanning town for each alternative and validation. Because the elder recounting his exploits, he tempers bravado with remorse, typically betraying how skinny the road is between reminiscence and invention. Niranj Maniyanpilla Raju performs Althaf with an understated heat, the sort of loyal buddy who reveals depth in quiet gestures. Shambhu and Sreenath Babu breathe life into Maniyan and Kanji, every a sketch of youthful starvation formed by circumstance, whereas Sachin Joseph ensures Moonga isn’t a caricature however a sharp-witted voice whose measurement belies his ferocity.
Then there’s Jagadish, quietly very good as Maithreyan. His weary, typically sceptical expressions lower by means of Arikuttan’s elaborations, turning into our stand-in throughout the story. Via him, the collection acknowledges its personal excesses, winking on the viewers whereas nonetheless pulling us deeper into its mythmaking. Indrans, as Arikuttan’s incarcerated father, walks away with a “mass” montage angling with a heartfelt father-son second inside jail confines. Darshana Rajendran, although sparingly used, lends Ramani a grounded depth that retains the narrative from floating away completely into fantasy.
Visually, the present is a deal with. Vishnu Prabhakar’s cinematography captures Thiruvananthapuram, not because the polished capital of vacationer brochures, however as a metropolis that breathes with contradictions: rain-slicked streets lit by garish neon, slum rooftops that double as hangout spots, and slim alleys that appear constructed for each escape and entrapment. The manufacturing design is equally meticulous, making a world the place each damaged wall and pale poster looks like a clue to the gang’s previous.
Krishand’s directorial thrives are unmistakable. He stitches collectively timelines with daring, typically cheeky transitions: comic-book frames, abrupt freeze photographs, and bursts of stylised montage. At instances, the collection feels much less like a drama and extra like a mischievous experiment in how far type can stretch earlier than snapping. For essentially the most half, it really works. The inventiveness retains the fabric buoyant, guaranteeing that even acquainted beats of crime and betrayal arrive tinged with shock. However there are moments, significantly within the center episodes, when the stylistic extra threatens to overwhelm the narrative. Subplots sprawl, accents often waver, and a few tangents might have benefited from tighter restraint.
Nonetheless, when the collection clicks, it does so with startling readability. A rooftop celebration, the place the gang toasts their hole victories whereas town hums beneath them, captures the absurdity of their ambition—a small crew of boys seeing themselves as kings of the world. Moonga’s acerbic outbursts, laced with each humour and harm, convey an emotional chunk that lingers. And the framing gadget of the biography itself retains tugging on the story’s seams, reminding us that this isn’t nearly a gang however in regards to the very act of storytelling: who will get to inform it, who chooses what to cover, and the way fact typically comes dressed as fiction.
What The Chronicles of the 4.5 Gang achieves, regardless of its flaws, is a contemporary recalibration of the gangster story. It’s messy and indulgent, sure, however intentionally so—as a result of gangsters, like storytellers, are hardly ever neat. Krishand doesn’t aspire to current a sophisticated chronicle; he desires us to really feel the chaos, to chortle on the absurdity, and to wrestle with the contradictions that make reminiscence unreliable and delusion irresistible.
In a streaming house crowded with formulaic thrillers and cookie-cutter gangster dramas, this collection dares to be doubtful but eccentrically lovable. It could stumble beneath the burden of its ambition, however its audacity is not possible to dismiss.
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