Here is a film that breaks the cliches of cinema. Filmmaker Nelson has done a commendable job with this unconventional flick that has a right mix of entertainment and message. Thanks to Nayanthara’s screen presence and Anirudh’s music, Nelson seems to have won the battle even before it begins.
Kokila (Nayanthara) is a typical middle-class girl. She is fearful, innocent, smart and gutsy – all in one. Nelson wants the audience to understand that she is independent and is ready to go to any extent to save her family. She adopts smarter ways than actual smugglers to hide cocaine. In a couple of scenes, ‘Motta’ Rajendran also compares her with his goons who are not as smart as Kokila in getting the job done.
When writing CoCo, Nelson should have been very clear that Kokila does not need a male company or a pair – and the first stereotype gets shattered here. The place where ‘Kalyana Vayasu‘ song breaks, we see her mocking Sekar (Yogi Babu) and this independent nature of the protagonist becomes more firm.
However, it does not stop with Sekar, but KoKo takes a dig at every male character. Be it the crazy Lakshmana Kumar aka LK (Anbu), Kokila’s father (RS Shivaji) or the smugglers played by Hareesh Peradi and Dinesh Mani and the rugged and honest cop essayed by Saravanan, all men in CoCo are fragile in some way.
For instance, Saravanan, though honest, is also an attention-seeker and wants big credit. This ultimately backfires on him towards the end.
But, Nelson has not handled anything cinematic. Every escape route that Kokila frames is a very simple but smart tactic, that any middle-class person can do. She can easily plot a man to death with just phone calls.
Nayanthara has mass moments that isn’t forced by the script. Her scenes with Yogi Babu are both hilarious and pensive.
CoCo, in a figurative context, depicts through a lot of metaphors and subtexts. Some of them are camouflaged, while the rest are direct, especially the lines of ‘Motta’ Rajendran.
There may be minor flaws in the screenplay, but Nelson’ dark humour on a limpid narration makes them negligible.