Review of movie Idam Jagath

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Rating:2/5

For anyone who has seen Dan Gilroy’s beauty of a debut, Nightcrawler, the basic premise of Idam Jagath with the way Nishith (Sumanth) is characterised will seem awfully familiar. Here too we have a protagonist who likes to prowl the deserted, dark streets looking for the perfect gory footage that is sensational enough to get him the moolah at the news station. There’s also the fact that his conscience is sketchy enough that you never want to believe he’s as selfish as he seems, wanting to see the good in him because he’s not bad enough. However, by the end of the film, debutant Anil’s Nishith too steps into the territory that makes Louis Bloom from Nightcrawler as bad as he is. 

Nishith is a man suffering from Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder that keeps him awake at nights, making it difficult for him to hold regular day jobs. When he finds stringers shooting footage of an accident one night, he decides to buy a camera and become a stringer too. But the deeper he gets into the job, the more he’s willing to bend ethics to get the kind of footage and consequently the money he wants. When he comes in possession of valuable footage that might change his life, he refuses to stop putting his life in danger. This is where Idam Jagath sets itself apart from Dan Gilroy’s film, with all the frills it unnecessarily fills itself with.

Because there’s also a love track featuring Mahati (Anju Kurian), an ex-software professional turned teacher/do-gooder that seems to exist for no reason at all. Because neither love nor his friendship with Anand (Satya) seems to tip the scale for Nishith, a monster who grows worse with time. Nishith’s characterisation is like a slow burn, never making it clear if he would really do something you think he’s capable of. And this is where the intrigue created by the film ends. None of the other elements put in seem to work, not even when lives are in danger and hearts broken.