Venicile Vyapari is all about a
murder which took place in the
1980’s and Pavithran
(Mammootty), a police constable
who is sent to investigate the
mystery. The name is adapted
from the famous Shakespearean
play “The Merchant of Venice”,
Alappuzha being the Venice of
Kerala and Mammooty the coir
merchant! It all happens in
Alappuzha when the coir
industry was at its peak and the
cooperative movement was
gaining ground. Directed by
Shafi, the film script has been
written by James Albert of
Classmate fame and has been
released in a grand gala opening.
Ajayan (Biju Menon), a local coir
worker and union leader in
Alappuzha, is murdered and
Pavithran is asked to probe the
mystery. Cops who had been
assigned this job earlier were
brutally assaulted by the
powerful landlords of the area.
Aware of this, Pavithran
disguised as a coir trader,
reaches the scene. He turns out
to be successful in business and
could afford to quit his lowly job.
Meanwhile, Ammu (Kavya
Madhavan), Ajayan’s sister falls in
love with Pavithran. Pavithran
meets a stock of interesting
characters and the story takes
different twists and turns
through plots and sub plots. The
structure of the story has been
arranged neatly by James Albert
and he develops the plot in a
gripping manner.
There are jokes aplenty in the
film that have the Shafi stamp all
over them. Mostly one liners and
some slapstick is what Venicile
Vyapari has on offer. There is
also good support from Suraj
Venjarumoodu and Salim Kumar
who makes coffins for a living.
Mammootty performs his part
without much strain and does a
brilliant job and makes sure that
he plays to the gallery. Kavya
Madhavan looks beautiful and
the role of a ravishing village
belle suits her perfectly. Poonam
Bajwa is just about okay. The rest
of the cast including Suraj
Venjarumoodu, Salimkumar,
Jagathy Sreekumar,
Vijayaraghavan , Suresh Krishna
Janardhanan and Sreeraman
have done their parts very well.
The visuals by ShyamDutt are
good and the music by Bijipal
suits the mood.
On the whole Venicile Vyapari is
a decently packaged family flick,
which may not be so great but is
indeed watchable.
