Kurup tries hard not to glorify its lead - Sudhakara Kurup - based on real-life fugitive Sukumara Kurup but ends up occasionally doing that and more! While the idea of digging into a fugitive's details by sifting through the pages of a crime memoir is a neat storytelling idea, the non-linearity acts as more than just a dampener in the film's slickly paced second half. The protagonist (also the antagonist) is a grey-shaded human. Still, even with lengthy flashbacks that take us through his days in the IAF, later as an entrepreneur in the Middle East, and as a wanted criminal in 1980s Kerala, we just don't understand Kurup at all. The dialogues are appalling except for the Kerala portions, where the focus is on the murder conspiracy and subsequent execution. Much of the applause in this act should go to Shine Tom Chacko, who's terrific.
The entire IAF portion (with Sunny Wayne), the romance with Sharadamma (a beautiful Shobita Dhulipala, who has nothing worthwhile to do; not even a single memorable line of dialogue), and the super-expository and over-the-top climax all wear the film down several notches. The best parts are bang in the middle, no doubt! Though fiction overrides reality for the most part, the makers seem to have taken cinematic liberties that exalt a con-man to near-mythical levels in the same fashion as Mohanlal's Lucifer. The only thing left was for him to join Illuminati and a have a drink with Khureshi Ab'ram. Nonetheless, Sushin Shyam's score is top-notch (but is the film deserving of it?), Banglan's production design recreates the era convincingly, and DOP Nimish Ravi's frames ooze visual flair.
The writers deserve a hard whack on their bottoms for using the non-linear trope only to completely undo even the tiniest bit of ambiguity, especially given that very little public information is available on Kurup. Why didn't they spend time telling us why Kurup was so greedy in the first place, or why his stances kept changing with time, or what the last words to his family were.. each of these could branch out into exciting plots of their own, so let's not even go there! Kurup is "all-style, messy plot, but technically solid." As one of the most anticipated films of the year, we begin to wonder at what point the makers lost that equilibrium in the first place.
