‘CBI 5: The Brain’ review: Sequel not worthy of a memorable series

Writing a sequel for a popular film series with more than three decades of history and many successes is no easy task. There is always hope to improve or at least match the previous ones. Seventeen years have passed since the release of the last film of the CBI series. Since then, Malayalam cinema has unintentionally changed. So investigations are thrillers. Nevertheless, there is still a market of nostalgia, which K. Madhu and S.N. The director-writer duo of Swamy is aimed at. CBI 5: The Brain,

But, to make a film attractive, nostalgia alone can’t do such a heavy job. Unfortunately, for the fifth film in the series, there’s hardly much else to add value. Nostalgia is also milked to its limit, with the popular theme music coming along with CBI officer Sethuram Iyer, with repeated dramas even when he visits the Chief Minister.

This time the investigation revolves around a series of murders known as the ‘Basket Killings’, for reasons that are never explained in the film. The victims include a minister, a police officer, a cardiologist and an activist, all of whom appear to be linked in some way or the other. In between, a staff member of the dead minister goes missing, the chief minister receives a threatening mail and much more happens, including several character introductions and possible explanations for the murders that are hard to keep track of.

As expected police investigation is getting hampered and demand for CBI probe is being raised. Iyer (Mammootty) and his team arrive. Yes, there is clear tracking of mobile records and flight data, but most of their conclusions are reached through endless conversations within the team, which become monotonous after a point. One of the few bright spots is the sequence involving Officer Vikram (Jagathi Sreekumar), which also offers an important clue on the identity of the killer.

Even the murders staged, from a routine hit-and-run to executions, all this lazily, give a hint of what lies ahead, not to mention the badly written opening scenes. for which there is an induction session for the youth. CBI officer. Be it the script or the making style, everything dates back to the time when the last CBI film was made. Considerable effort would have been put into making sure that the investigation part didn’t involve the audience at all, so even a clue on the potential killer, which marked the endpoint, didn’t evoke much reaction in us. Is.

But, things are very bad, especially the part where Iyer uncovers the mystery behind the mastermind behind the murders. This is the kind of plot twist that has been used so much that nowadays people have stopped employing it. Finally, one wished for another investigation to discover the ‘mind’ mentioned in the title, but which is missing in the film’s script. Few sequels spoil the memory of the entire series for us. CBI 5: The Brain is one of them.