Review Of The Last Two Days, On Neestream: A Painfully Straightforward Investigation With No Surprises

An assembly line of characters appear at regular intervals practically feeding the officer with clues.
Review Of The Last Two Days, On Neestream: A Painfully Straightforward Investigation With No Surprises

Director: Santosh Lakshman

Cast: Deepak Parambol, Dharmajan Bolgatty, Nandan Unni 

Three politicians have gone missing just weeks before an important election. The police force, upon their first investigation, decide to close the missing case after struggling to find clues. They're running out of time and the police need to save face. So they send circle inspector Srikanth (Deepak Parambol) on unofficial duty to see if there's anything they can find out before hanging up their boots. 

This is the setup of The Last Two Days, out now on Neestream. Given that these three are politicians, the obvious doubts crop up. Should he begin the investigation with their enemies, rival politicians, angry businessmen or hurt family members? Have they disappeared to create a sympathy wave or have they left without any plans of coming back?

These are very obvious questions, but you're surprised to see why these don't feature in the investigation left unfinished by the previous officers. Srikanth starts from scratch and the answers become obvious to us before Srikanth gets there. He is positioned to be a very smart cookie, always brooding, always strategising, yet he takes forever to figure out the simplest of clues.

Even the assembly line of characters further trivialise the whole case. In regular intervals, we get characters appearing one after the other, leaving Srikanth with vital clues. He's only asking obvious questions but their confessions come so easy that it feels like Srikanth had merely asked them to pass the salt. Apart from meeting one person after another, there's not much he has to do. Yet he shockingly stumbles upon an important place even without being urged. He drives to a chemical factory and on his way there, he happens to drop in on the most vital clue of them all. 

It's these silly little ideas that never allow us to take this movie seriously. We sense the limitations in the budget when a majority of the film is set within the same places but there's no excuses for bad writing and an overall lack of logic. Even before we get to the final reveal, you get the feeling that none of the characters we've been introduced to will matter now. The twists don't land and the key to the investigation is quite literally dropped off at Srikanth's without him having to do anything. With oddly placed English songs in the BGM and several shots of Srikanth simply  walking up and down, there's a tacky amateurishness to The Last Two Hours that makes even its 70-minute runtime feel long. Apart from one small detail, there's not much in the screenplay that needed to go beyond a first draft.

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