The sophomore venture from director Khalid Rahman features an ensemble cast, headlined by a very de-glammed Mammootty. Much like his debut Anuraga Karikkin Vellam (The Tender Coconut Water of Love…?), Unda too revolves around a borderline-dysfunctional group – the hero’s family in the former - though this time, it’s a larger one with much bigger stakes. Unda begins with a battalion of cops from the Kerala Police camp getting set for a mission: assist the ITBP in ensuring that the local elections in certain stations, deep within the forests of Chhattisgarh and considered infested by Maoists, take place on time and sans a hitch. The battalion gets further divided once they’ve reached the state, and from here on, we follow the 9-men troop, led by Sub-Inspector Manikandan (Mammootty) and headed to Bastar. Now unlike the actor’s khaki-clad characters from the past, SI Mani is a world-weary man who is nearing retirement and yet, doesn’t have much to highlight in his resume. However, that doesn’t stop his teammates from looking up to him… until he falters miserably during the first of many near-death situations faced by the rag-tag squad. And yes, Mammootty performs best when provided with roles outside the starry rut and he continues the trend here too.
Coming to the subordinates, the writer (Harshad) and the director have etched each of the eight guys with distinct personalities and backstories. And as a result, there are several internal conflicts too: ones which must be resolved before the insurgents get to hit the station. There is the cop who happens to be the only one capable of properly handling a rifle, but is totally pissed, thanks to an impending divorce. And there is that guy who gets his high from spitting racial slurs at his colleague, who happens to hail from a tribal area. Another is expecting a child, while yet another is just about to tie the knot. Also on the scene are the ever-suspicious guy, the one who hopes to make it big on the silver screen someday and the one who hardly speaks, but has a bottle ready and tucked away in his bag. Naturally, it's up to the leader to keep the bunch in check. And amidst these ever-escalating internal issues and the team's whole fish-out-of-water situation, comes another, even bigger problem: Lack of Ammo (and hence the title, Unda).
Naturally, one would expect a film with such a storyline to be a wholly dark, dour and serious affair, and Unda is anything but. The makers use the plot to not-so-subtly lampoon how the Government machineries keep playing the blame game through such a grave situation, and to emphasize the point that after all, the so-called Maoists might well be the manifestations of vote-hungry politicians . There are also plenty of laugh-out-loud moments that strangely, but brilliantly gel with the morbidity of the situation. The climactic fight sequence gets a bit OTT compared to the rest of the film, but here too, we get to see teamwork at play, rather than the lone hero single-handedly mowing an armed gang down.
Also at the heart of the movie is Kunal Chand (Omkar Das Manikpuri), a Bastar native whose village had been ruthlessly cleared out to accomodate the armed forces in the name of fighting the Maoist threats. It's through this character and Kapil Dev (Bhagwan Tiwari), the hard-drinking resident guard-cum-doctor at the Bastar station, the team slowly get to learn the gravity of the whole situation. And there's the ITBP Commander, who gets flummoxed by the team's complete lack of awareness, every time he comes to assess the situation. Thankfully, apart from a gang that arrives near the film's climax, all these characters are just flesh-and-blood humans, but exhausted beyond their limits.
Supporting performances are solid all around in this film, though special mention goes for Omkar Das as well as Lukman, who plays Biju, the cop who gets subjected to racial insults so frequently , that once he reaches the breaking point, he vows to quit his hard-earned job . Coming to the technical merits, the film fires on all rounds and hits the target, and hence, without a doubt, the film looks and sounds great in the Full HD-Dolby Digital 5.1 presentation from Amazon Prime.
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