calcutta news review

Blessy is a master story teller. His previous endeavours had proven it beyond doubt. Now, 'Calcutta News ', produced by Kaayal Films, also stands testimony to that. Set in the backdrop of urban Kolkata, this gripping story deals with the disturbing social menace of sex rackets. More than a love story, the plot explores the lives of innocent women who feel shunted out by a world that doesn't understand them due to their circumstances.

The news is not just from Calcutta alone. This absorbing story can happen anywhere in the country or at any part of this world. So universal is the theme. And the narration is bonny to watch - even if it is somewhat cinematic and overly simplistic, in the context of the bolder theme.

The film is a variation on the village-family themes that the director had been with for long, but instead, our female protagonist brood about in the caliginous emotional aftermath of her husband's death. On the surface, the film is very much in the detailing the plight of innocent country girl who winds up in the big city and becomes the punching bag victim of a fake marriage, undergoes the death of his so called husband and rejection by unfeeling society, and who becomes so besieged by tragedy that she is blind to the genuine love offered to her by a gutsy journalist.

The film opens with Ajith Thomas (Dileep), an acclaimed investigative television producer and anchor of a leading channel 'Calcutta News', being felicitated for his work 'Shadows of Calcutta' -entirely shot via mobile phone cameras, receiving a national award for its sincerity and boldness of theme. The plot lines open with Ajith narrating the incidents that made him to produce this work of art. Ajith, the son of a former footballer of Mohammedans grew up in Kolkata with his two sisters and his mother, in an apartment that his mother considered important as they resided there from their early days. An active member of kairalee malayalee samajan headed by a comical president (Innocent ), Ajith has at his disposal a strong media team including producers Smita (Vimala Raman), and news anchors Aruna (Manasa) and Sheela (Brinda) and bunch of cameraman and editors.

One day on a hectic shoot of kali pooja, he bumps into a newly married Malayalee couple who were seen irritable before camera. And in the next day Ajith meets them again on a tram and the guy turns hostile realizing Ajith is a malayali. Within few days Ajith once again finds him while editing the news, this time found as an unidentified body found near Kalighat. Ajith immediately go through the rushes and make arrangements to beam the previous shots of the couple that he shot, so that some one may come forward to claim the body.

Within a couple of days Ajith get news about the girl, 'Krishnapriya' who was brutally beaten and locked up in a petty lodge in the city. Ajith with the help of kairali samagam offers help to her who identifies the body of her husband Hari (Indrajith), with whom she was married five days back. She being a an orphan from Pattambi with no one back in her village, they leave the claim on the body. But the shattered girl with the agony, anger and grief combined with the uncertainty of life tries for a suicide. But Ajith comes up in the role of her protector and arranges her stay with his workmates in the channel. Soon he gets attracted to Krishnapriya primarily due to her love for singing and music.

But within days, Ajit finds that Hari was one of the henchman in a sex racket that traps innocent girls and sells them for lakhs to the Sonagachi sex mafia led by one-arm bearded guy (Kathal fame Krishnamoorthy) . But as days goes by, Krishnapriya develops a kind of obsessive compulsive disorder thinking about herse