Darvinte Parinamam

Cast

Plot

Anil Anto and his wife shift from Kottarakara and settle down with help of his friends in Kochi. They rent a small apartment and slowly settle down to their lives. Anil works for a cable TV company as a technician. Gorilla Darvin is a well known gangster who along with his brothers rule Kochi underworld. Anil's wife is pregnant and they are very happy. During a drive by Darvin's brother steals Anil's wifes' chain and pushes her down causing an abortion. Their lives turns due to this incident. They complain to police to no avail. During an installation, he sees the person who caused this problem. He chases them and gets into a fight. He brutally beats him up and takes him to police. The Police inspector is a cousin of Darvin and abuses Anil for beating up a culprit. He then calls up Darvin to come pick his brother. Darvin picks his brother from the Police station and insults Anil by giving some money to Anil to get his wife a new chain. Anil slaps Darvin which causes a scene. Darvin retreats back. Anil then faces the wrath of Darvin. Darvin and gang slowly steal every belonging from Anil and leave them with just an empty apartment. Anil loses all his possessions. A friendly police then explains that this is Darvin's style of reacting and he cannot do anything about it. After all this, Anil takes help from a small time gangster to try kidnap Darvin's kid and fails spectacularly in comedic fashion. They decide to kidnap Darvin's younger brother who is a film buff. They make a ransom call to Darvin only to be rebutted. While browsing through the photos on Gilli's phone, Anil finds the photo of a golden statue belonging to the church in their area. He realises that Darvin in the pretext of repairing the church has switched the golden one for a duplicate statue and holds the golden one in his chicken farm. Anil then steals this statue from the farm and starts negotiating with Darvin knowing that Darvin has a deal fixed to sell this statue to a foreign customer. He asks Darvin to give him his stuff, not new but the exact items stolen from him. Beginning a cat and mouse game pushing Darvin's patience. The final item is Anil's bike which was stolen from him and sold to Darvin's rival. Darvin fights with his rival (solomon) to get the bike back. However, as Solomon tries to kill Darvin, Anil intervenes and helps Darvin out. Darvin initially plans to finish Anil for good once he tells him the location of the golden statue, however has a change of heart after Anil helps him out.

Music

The original songs were composed by Shankar Sharma, who had sung Athala Pithala song in Double Barrel (2015). Songs are labelled by Satyam Audios and was released on 3 March 2016.

Production

Directed by Jijo Antony of Konthayum Poonoolum. Prithviraj Sukumaran and Chemban Vinod Jose does the lead roles, while Chandini Sreedharan was selected as the female lead against Prithviraj. Prithviraj, Santhosh Sivan, Arya, and Shaji Nadesan signed to produce the film under the production and distribution company August Cinema. Filming commenced on 1 October at Fort Kochi in Ernakulam.

Critical Reception

The Times of India rated it 3.0 out of 5.0 and said "Director Jijo Anthony's Darvinte Parinamam might have a formulaic story of the protagonist leading a happy life till a villain wreaks havoc. The hero then evolves and seeks salvation. What makes this film different is the perspective from which it is intentionally told. The story and concept hold promise, but the execution falters due to the lack of clarity in the script and direction. The emotional turmoil that Prithviraj's character undergoes after a tragedy obviously has the audience rooting for him and sympathizing less for Darvin. The latter's perspective, crudely shown, seems diluted to glorify the movie's apparent hero".

Nowrunning rated it 2 out of 5 and said that 'Darvinte Parinamam' does put forward the buoyant suggestion every now and then that something better is lying in wait just round the corner. But it carries on babbling continually, almost as if not knowing when to stop, and at the end of it all, is left with nothing but a few sparsely delightful moments here or there.