Indian director Dinjith Ayyathan had a local hit on this mixed genre film, shot in Malayalam, a language mostly spoken in the South which boasts some verdant mountainous terrain used here for some spectacular views & action sequences. Spanning decades, the non-linear story construction goes back to WWII and forward to . . . when? Now? Just how old is that health-compromised loner supposed to be?; living with her attack dogs in a mountaintop cabin with a hunky helper who’s not what he appears to be. He’s surely no gentle caregiver, turning into a fighter with Martial Arts chops for an acrobatic battle with the two baddies who’ve been tracking granny. For those pedigree dogs? For land rights? Hard to know under Ayyathan’s incomprehensible style of unmotivated camera movement (panning, circling, spinning in place) used for all occasions, worsened by quick, off-the-beat editing. Scene by scene, you can tell the bad guys from the good, but even that’s subject to misreading. (Ayyathan got his start in animation, so perhaps the technique worked better there.) Or does Malayalam culture regularly flaunt the time/space continuum? These eyes were lost in translation. Literally so as the subtitles whiz by too fast to read.
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