Under immense pressure to solve high-profile cases, police officers often opt for drastic measures. Early on in Garudan, Harish Madhav (Suresh Gopi), leading an investigation of a brutal rape of a college student, orders an outlandish DNA profiling and matching plan to track down the culprit. Curiously, that sudden brainwave also becomes the trigger that would solve the case, though unconvincingly and for the time being. Considering how the story shifts later, it appears as if the director used the idea in a convenient manner.
Arun Varma’s debut directorial, Garudan, is filled with such contrivances and some old-fashioned narrative tricks, like the protagonist listing out to the culprit his entire history of crime. But, when there are compelling reasons to overlook contrived sequences, one chooses to do so, as it happens here. For, M.Jinesh’s story and Midhun Manuel Thomas’s script have enough in them to keep us intrigued for much of the run-time, even when we can sense how it will all turn out in the end, from miles away.
The writer choosing the easy way out of the tangle on multiple occasions is somewhat disappointing. The script progresses as a battle of wits in which the tables keep turning, landing the audience in a dilemma. By the halfway point, the narrative reaches a situation that could have been considered a proper way to end the movie. That would have matched the story most viewers would have imagined from the seemingly revealing trailers.
