Luca is an entertainer to enjoy with friends!

The end frame of the movie Luca says, "a film by Arun Bose and friends". It is a signature that the movie Luca carries throughout its entirety: it is evident that a boisterous bunch of young people shot this movie. It has perfect frames, cinematographic quality, technical perfection, well-thought-out costuming, audio work and editing are on point. So how may a movie that has so much going for it still fall short?A young member of the Kochi intelligentsia - Luca - is found dead at his home and main investigation officer Akbar finds the diary of Luca's ex-girlfriend at his home. The ex-girlfriend hailing from Bangalore is also found dead, incidentally. Though these deaths look like unconnected suicides, Akbar sees the possibility that this could be a murder and goes after it.  The movie follows Akbar as he solves this case.

The character Luca - short tempered, but straight-forward and downright nice - is aptly played by Tovino Thomas, who is charming and convincing as a biennale-going boy. Tovino Thomas happened to the Malayalam industry in the same way that movies like Aadu Oru Bheekara Jeeviyanu and Sapthamasree Thaskara happened. Those movies and this actor are silent hits. They arrived without much fanfare, were not instant stars, but got circulated around and became popular because of quality. Now Tovino is fine wine and 2019 is proving to be his busiest year yet. Luca's lady love Niharika is portrayed by Ahana Krishna, who is quite something onscreen. We hope Kollywood finds her fast enough and that her two upcoming Malayalam movies - pathinettam padi and pidikittappulli - gives her sizeable chunks of screenspace. The lady can act. If we say more, we may end up spouting spoilers by the way of praising her skills.

Nithin George, who plays the main investigating officer Akbar, is also a commendable actor. In the first 15 minutes of the movie, he succeeds in engaging the audience with convincing body language (tough cop) and then proceeds to entertain with a love song. He's consistent through the movie, but the character suffers a lack of depth which leaves most of his personal actions questionable: something that even a natural actor cannot compensate. The only bone of contention we may have is that while there is a good story being told in a visually pleasing manner, the plotline in itself is not really plausible. It's true that flawed characters attract each other, but no girl would take a visibly quarrelsome dude till her house on the first day of a meeting which didn't even happen by introduction. We're not calling the character loose - the sequence of events did not seem deep enough to warrant an instant connection she apparently has with Luca. Luca's flaws are related to a phobia; but a conversation about phobia is not going to influence a theatre full of people - we probably needed two or more scenes to be convinced that the phobia is serious enough to warrant some developments that happen later in the story.

The climax has a cool twist, we daren't comment on it at all right now. The climax is what the movie Luca lives for - the story breaks open in the last 10 minutes and the twist quickly winds up the movie, but by the end of it, the audience aren't quite convinced of the plausibility of the method of murder. There is one moment of absolute success for the director in the movie that begs mention. In a particular scene, a sweeping maid finds Akbar's pet cat dead, takes a closer look suspiciously and goes "uh... Pooche?" (Hey, cat?). The audience erupted to this as a whole with clockwork precision and some were still chuckling about it while leaving the theatre.

Overall, Luca is an entertainer that 90% of malayalis aged 18-30 would enjoy watching in theatres with friends. Indeed, in Chennai there were college-girl-gangs bunking classes and watching the movie on the first day (all thanks to the Mayanadhi effect). The girls loved the romance scenes and attested to it rather loudly in theatre. Stepping out after the movie, they called Luca a pretty treat while wondering if they should google to find out if the climax was realistic. The interactions between Luca and Niharika and the association of the main suspect on the movie with Niharika were all well portrayed, they opined. In all, Luca is a movie you won't regret watching.

Rating: 3/5