CBI 5: The Brain

An one time watchable average movie.. If you have watched all cbi series, this would be definitely disappoint you.. Script and story telling is too weak that it feels like lagging just after few minutes of movie. Climax is somewhat expected but still okay...

Direction was poor, supporting actors performance was not up to mark, dialogues were unnatural and editing was not good. Cuts and transitions felt disconnected at many places.

I'm a huge fan of CBI series. Perhaps this was the first movie which I ever saw on first day first show without seeing the IMDB ratings and reviews.

Writing a sequel for a popular film series is an extremely tough task. Expectations are always high and we expect a better ones than the previous or at least a matching one. Here nostalgia is the marketing strategy. Films including James bond series work on this principle.

The movie revolve around a series of not so obviously related murders which police fails to resolves and thus case was handed over to CBI.

The script was weak and lagging through out the movie. Even the opening scenes featuring an induction session for the IPS trainees was badly written and executed.

Only beautiful and memorable scene in this movie is that of Jagathy. We miss you Sir!

The movie end with a lot of questions unanswered.

At the end I wish to set up another CBI investigation to find the missing script!

The story started good. Twists and turns were making the story interesting. But I felt they were trying to create a lot of misdirections to keep the suspense alive. Which in turn left lot of open ended threads. At one point the writer just hastily grabbed one thread and reached a conclusion. Its not even logical ending.

The entry of the main protagonist Sethuraman Iyer is delayed for a better effect. But it was too delayed. At one point of time I started feeling when will the story begins. They had a good story with good actors to give us a great movie. But they failed spectacularly.

Editing could have been much better. This is the worst part of the movie.

Its an ok one time watch. That too being generous.

CBI 5: The Brain is actually CBI: The Greatest Hits. All ideas, including the climax twist, have been rehashed from the previous films. SN Swamy tries to contemporize one of the kills, but once certain things become evident in the more briskly paced second half, I realized that he was only harking back to another script of his (from the '90s) starring Mammootty himself. The film is exposition-heavy, and those vague close-up shots, which may have worked 15-20 years ago, fail to work here. The setting, the playout of events, and the not-so-novel idea of the killer having accomplices are all picked up from the earlier entries and Swamy's other works. But the most disappointing factor here is the motive for the killings - not only is it the weakest element but it also struggles to firmly bind everything together. Even when there were loopholes and questionable climaxes in the earlier ventures, at least the murderer's motive was one that made sense.

P. S - It was a pleasure seeing Jagathy Sreekumar (as Vikram) for that wonderfully effective but short scene. Even Mukesh (as Chacko) showing up for just a couple of scenes felt nice.