Image Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Soup
"It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sounds and fury, signifying nothing." That's how the whole series ends.
How many times has a director been honest in summing up a story in one line at the end of the story. This is one such instance with the director feeding up a coagulated plot to the audience and summarizing the pain to the audience at the culmination of the story.
This review will be short and would save you the pain of dangling between ill placed cuss words and predictable sub plots which have been given the shape of accidents rather than intended homicide.
I was really disappointed with the plot and probably the writing. I have huge respect for people who write screenplay and stories and this in no way demeans the effort of writers of this one too. But I felt, that there has been a lot of patchwork in this story. Good editing has been able to streamline the story and bring some sense but overall the audience feels like they have landed in no man's land.
The performance of all the actors is really good (of course they are very good professionals) but the real let down happens on the writing part.
**SPOILERS AHEAD**
I mean one of the protagonists, Prabhakar, died in the initial part of the story and is replaced by an impostor and none of his near and dear ones have an inkling that he is not the same guy. NOT EVEN ONE. Really? Although I am not a professional writer but I feel that for a thriller to work well, the sense of doubt and confusion is the biggest weapon. One of the old Hindi movies, Baazigar, camouflaged it very well and had that tincture of confusion all the time. Although the audience knew the culprit but the story still kept the audience engaged and hooked.
The role of Arvind Shetty played by Sayaji Shinde looked all the over the place. I really couldn't make any sense of it. A dominant businessman in whole of Tamil Nadu doesn't seems dominating enough. There are not enough extras around him to show his power and his appearances felt very weak. His last words while dying is a WTF moment and is a testimony of the weak writing. Probably, this character is the weakest character and should have been used more aptly.
This series feels like it belongs to Konkana Sen. Heavily dominated by her presence and the story revolves around her character in many ways. But her character is confusing as well. She has a dream of getting her own restaurant and to get that she involves herself in multiple murders and insane situations. Her character is really mean and bitchy and reminds me of Lena Headley's performance in GoT. Sometimes I felt she is like the shrewd Mom in Law from yester years who would go to any length to torture the daughter in laws. A completely non-compromising selfish antagonist vouching for a dream and cooking "Paya killer soup" for all and sundry.
I dunno what to say about Inspector Hassan's character played by Nasser. An investigation officer who is laid back to start with but becomes curious in a case after the loss of a bright officer in the case. He hallucinates all the time about the officer giving him clues every now and then. A great addition to the plot would have been that Hassan was always high on mushrooms. Would have been logical and creatively connected to the plot too.
There are many many bloopers and everything doesn't add up to be a cohesive plot. I am sure the writing would have been reviewed by so many people and many stalwarts but I don't know how people were convinced on the same.
But I really liked the technicalities and performances. Almost everyone has justified their part and nothing more can be asked from the BTS team as well.
Two standout creative approaches in the series has been -
1. Intermingling of Tamil and Hindi languages and trying to bridge the divide. Perhaps, a series gives more opportunities to do the same and cater to larger audience. But this is important and really helps in improving and tailoring the minds of people watching the series.
2. The hallucinating character of Inspector Thuppali with a raincoat and persistent rainfall on him. A very creative approach to show how manifestations stick to people's mind in a particular way.
All in all, I really wanted to SOUP to play a more dominant role. Soup seems more notional and points to the "RAITA" in the family and of course the PLOT. The main character, SOUP, should have had more part to play but keeps begging for its place. As per the series, it is definitely DARK but not sure about COMEDY.
PS: This is just a small review of this series I saw. This is completely my independent opinion and outpour on the series. I really respect the effort people put in creating their vision into reality. I apologize if anything in this review causes concern or demeans anyone.
I wrote this small comment on Manoj Bajpayee sir's instagram as a very short review to bring out the comedy in the soup.
