Paradise – What a Blast!!! PK Verdict: Gold Plus 4.5⭐️s

Paradise – What a Blast!!!

Director Prasanna Vithanage brings us an adventurous thriller sub layered with the mist of the mountains giving us a beauty with its cinematography, sound-design, crisp writing, and spectacular performances along with a ticket to Sri Lanka that integrates our epic Ramanayana. The tour gives us parallels to think upon. Roshan Mathews and Darshana Rajendran’s chemistry has gravitas, the plot makes you ground for the couple right from the frame one and what a surprise the director brings, leaving us spellbound with its climax giving us a blast.

It is the year 2022, when Sri Lanka declares bankruptcy and there is a harsh impact, people are on to the streets to fight for their essentials, fuel, medicine, and livelihood. Country by large is at halt and yet what makes it survive, is its revival of the tourism. Here comes a cute couple Keshav and Amritha to celebrate their 5^th anniversary of togetherness, navigating each other further through the misty mountains of Sri Lanka, exploring the beauty, wild-life, adventure, and their journey.

Keshav is content creator pitching his writing to one of the leading OTT platforms and receives the news of his proposal being accepted, the couple hug each other and speak about celebration. They speak about celebrating it big while being navigated in the lanes of Sri Lanka in the tourist car with their driver of the country that is bankrupted. Director succeeds to navigate through our brains sparking a but curiosity to what lies ahead. The curiosity continues when the couple steps out for hunt soon after they arrive at the Hotel. The exchanges in the car are something to experience, they bring us a feel of an adventure and thrill. They see a beautiful deer to hunt, drawn parallel from Ramayana, where Sita was mesmerized by the beautiful deer. Amritha is also mesmerized by the magnificent deer and gets compassionate to the beauty. The couple return at the hotel and the candlelight dinner await them as power is gone. The ambience is immersive, engaging you with the couple’s intimacy.  They start speaking about raising their family as they see Keshav’s career falling in place. The two make the ideal couple and you ground for them to the core. It’s the couple in the paradise you vouch for, the intricacies the director has integrated to make this couple look ideal is commendable and are to experience while you watch the film.

Trouble in the paradise occurs when on the same night they are being robbed at knife point. Keshav’s all content is in his ipad, and he go bonkers to get his stuff back. The helplessness of Police visiting the robbery scene is limited by the availability of the fuel as Sri Lanka is under bankruptcy. Mahendra Perera as Sergeant Bandara is brilliant in his performance. When the couple arrives at police station along with their driver Andrew, to file an FIR, cops at the station try to discount them and claim they are adding more fuel to the already burning Sri Lanka. Andrew the driver played by  Shyam Fernando is brilliant in his act. He comes as a great support in turbulent times yet somewhere you will be curious to know if he is also the one that could be doubted. When significance of human life is being discussed at the crucial time, Sergeant Bandara answers “one vote”. The writing has a depth and so does the performances.

In the drama, where robbery is not as big as one may think off, mere few gadgets, what the director brings out of the characters involved is the dynamics the couple share, staff of the hotel, the police, and the current Sri Lankan bankruptcy situation they all very subtly add to the plot. In the quest of finding their belongings they experience human violence, helplessness, system failure and in the scheme of larger things their troubles were minimal, what director explores is the under currents we all go through and how these can sometime bring a blast.

In the pursuit of finding what is lost, they lose….….. (No spoilers here).

Paradise literally means intermediate place or state where the souls of the righteous await resurrection and the final judgment. The title of the film has a great philosophy waiting for you to explore.

Paradise Do not miss this blast.

PK Verdict: Gold Plus 4.5 ⭐️s

The film is in competition on the Indian language’s films segment of the Indo-German Film Festival 2024 and theatrical release is line up on 28^th June 2024.