The men are brought back to Coimbatore, and Kumar is dropped on the way to Chennai. Muthuvel asks the remaining three men to clean the police station before leaving, giving them a job as a helping hand to let them sustain themselves for a few days. KK is interrogated at the police station, and he dies; as a result, the Deputy Commissioner of Police and Muthuvel have a discussion to cover up the death as a suicide.

After the meeting, the DCP saw the workers Pandi and Afzal cleaning in an adjoining bathroom and suspected that they might have overheard the plan. To cover up, the police authorities decide to frame Pandi and his friends as convicts in a pending ATM robbery case and eliminate them under the cover of an encounter. Muthuvel, who feels responsible for the three men, is fed up with the corruption and immorality of the events that have transpired and initially refuses to cooperate, but he is coerced because of his deep involvement. During the staged encounter of the arrest of the migrant workers, Afzal is killed, causing Pandi and Murugan to run away. In the ensuing pursuit, Murugan is shot and killed.

Meanwhile, orders arrive from the DCP to tie up loose ends and eliminate Muthuvel as well. In the end, both Muthuvel and Pandi are dead.

Questions of survival: the curious case of
Nayattu in cop-centered Malayalam cinema

Malayalam films in the 1950s were the first among their counterparts in the southern industries to be critically described as socially realist films. Such films were hailed as “aesthetically superior” for “nationalist” realism, which focuses on the regions, their people and landscape, rather than on narrative realism, where the plot development takes over all the elements of the film. Such an approach also influenced political life, where, for example, E M S Namboodiripadon, the first Chief Minister of Kerala from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), in his essays, endorsed a kind of art that would reflect ordinary people’s day-to-day life. The ideology Left progressive art in this period strove to

“valorise the working-class life and a simultaneous imagining of the toiling masses- the primary target audience [is] susceptible to 'false consciousness' which prevents them from realising their class interest, and which thus necessitates their 'awakening' through progressive art”.

Left-affiliated artists then, through the new popular cinema in the coming decades, targeted a mass audience, also known as the ‘rational subaltern’ audience in Kerala’s political landscape (Joseph, 2012: 29-32). 

In the 1980s, Malayalam cinema, known for its progressive content, was also hit by a wave of ‘hetero-patriarchal’ heroes donning khaki, speaking harshly, bashing the underworld mafia, lecturing strayed politicians and playing the role of ultimate saviour of the corrupt Malayali society. Getting roles as police officers became a must for the leading actors of the industry to achieve superstardom status. Koickakudy (2023), in his study of Malayalam cop movies in the last three decades, brings out some characteristics of the cops. He argues that there is a certain formula for creating a hero cop.

“A good cop has to have certain traits, including a fair complexion, upper class and well-dressed appearance with a built body and thick yet maintained moustache. In contrast, a bad cop is portrayed as a dark man with a crooked demeanour and unbuttoned uniform. On similar lines, a lower caste cop who is generally dark is shown as assisting the upper caste main hero (the senior cop). This is also true of the police characters from religious minorities, who are shown as dark and subordinate to upper-caste officers. Similarly, female police characters were objectified as they were being used to represent sexual connotations and purposely for the male gaze in the police station.  Female police officers as constables were represented as voluptuous and dark, speaking local dialects. In contrast, senior-ranked female police officers are shown to be English-speaking, lean, and fair, drawing a stark differentiation in the class and community they hailed from.”

That being said, in the last two decades, realistic police dramas and crime thrillers based on real-life incidents have been the most popular genre in the Malayalam film industry. Various new filmmakers are picking up real stories from the hinterlands in Kerala about sensational crimes, police investigation procedures, daily life struggles of cops, the relations between policing and politics, etc.[2] [open endnotes in new window] In an interesting development, real-life cops have turned into actors, directors, and screenwriters, also making this genre cinematically more realistic. Thus, Nayattu (2021) emerges as a movie which tries to break heroic stereotypes and gives a realistic understanding of things in the context of the police station and its daily affairs. This film was Martin Prakkat’s (Director of Nayattu) first stint in the cop genre. He has then ventured further by being the producer of Iratta (2023) and Officer on Duty (2025). In addition, the screenwriter of Nayattu, Shahi Kabir, has served as a police officer. He also wrote the scripts for Joseph (2018) and Officer on Duty (2025) and donned the hat of the director for Ela Veezha Poonchira (2022). All these movies are thrillers centred around the low-ranked police officers in Kerala.

Ela Veezha Poonchira (2022) is the directorial debut of Shahi Kabir, it follows the story of two police officers at a small wireless police station working to resolve the mystery when a woman's body parts are scattered all over Ela Veezha Poonchira.	Officer on Duty (2025), produced by Martin Prakkat and written by Shahi Kabir, is a story of a demoted police inspector investigating a counterfeit jewelry racket case.

Nayattu (2021) tells the struggles which Maniyan (Joju Goerge), Sunitha (Nimisha Sajayan), and Praveen (Kunchako Boban)—three police officers of lower rank—had to go through. Maniyan and Praveen confront Sunitha’s cousin, Biju, who was summoned to the police station for troubling Sunitha and her mother. They end up in a scuffle, and Biju is placed in the cell but released because of his Dalit identity, and he has political influence as well.

While the trio was returning from a wedding party, their vehicle collided with a motorcycle, killing the rider, who was later identified as Jayan, a close friend of Biju. Rahul, Maniyan’s nephew who was driving the vehicle at the time of the accident, goes into hiding, leaving the three responsible for the death of Jayan. The three flee to Munnar to seek asylum when they realise that they have been framed because of political pressure. The police find them, and during the chase, they find the young policeman Maniyan (who himself is a Dalit) hanging from a tree, leaving a video recording to his daughter saying that he is not a murderer. The police arrest the two and try to make Maniyan responsible for the accident and for the death of the Dalit youth Jayan.

Nayattu and Visaranai: textual analysis

The textual analysis is divided into two strands. First traces the style, including the distinct visual and aural choices that create a unique aesthetic, revealing the artistic intent beyond just the story itself. The other considers narrative, where the actual story unfolds, and through characters and stories, a picture of society is drawn. Vetrimaaran and Prakkat expertly use many stylistic elements. For our analysis of the police state and the ordeals of low-ranked police officers and the marginalized, we specifically focus on four stylistic elements which we found common to both films.

First is the use of realistic aesthetics of the night scene. Many old Malayalam films have shown night as a backdrop for fateful and tragic events. Here, in Nayattu, the accident where Jayan is killed also happens on the night after Praveen and Maniyan have been drinking alcohol at the wedding reception, which again connotes moral transgressions and portrays darkness in a negative light. In that vein, James and Pillai (2023) note that contemporary Malayalam cinema has (re)imagined darkness/night as mediated spaces that foster conviviality, which became clearly visible after Kumbalangi Nights (2019). In that context, Prakkat also uses night as a medium of conflict and bonding in his films; for example, the film Charlie (2015) portrays the protagonist’s fascinating friendship with Suni (Soubin Shahir), Kani (Aparna Gopinath), and Mary (Kalpana) against the backdrop of Kochi’s winter nights. In this case, in Nayattu, the night is chosen as a stylistic element; here, the accident occurs, and conflict and then bonding develops between the three. Night, as a temporal and spatial realm, serves as a refuge for the three policemen.

In Visaranai as well, the night is a stylistic element. In the initial part of the movie, the three migrants are caught and brought to the police station in the early hours of the day when there is still darkness and the streets are empty; the institutional murder of KK and the staging of his suicide are also carried out in the late-night hours. Then, the long climax scene takes place at night when the three are brought to a home to frame them in a robbery case; we see the clock show 2:30 am. Outside, Afsal is shot dead by Ramesh, and the other two men hide in a weedy marshland. Finally, in the closing scene, the screen fades to black, and we hear the non-diegetic sound of two gunshots fired by policemen Chandran from a distance at a staged encounter of Muthevel and Pandi.

Another stylistic aesthetic comes into play in the realistic depiction of the police station, which is different in Nayattu and Visaranai.

In Visaranai, we see the Ramakrishna police station in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, when the three migrants are brought to the station for the first time. They are beaten with a pink stick by the police officer in an open space just after entering the police station. The power implication of the space is stylistically highlighted since the officer doesn’t ask any questions or take them to a different room inside the police station for flogging. We see the inside areas, such as cells, torture rooms, inspectors’ rooms, etc. and the outside spaces, such as toilets, compounds, roofs, etc. These shots not only give a spatial understanding of the police station but also the interaction between the police officers and the citizens in these spaces. The stylized depiction of the jail gives us a social picture of low-ranked police officers and their day-to-day functioning in the background. All that is presented, while the foreground action is the torture of the migrants.  The Ramnagar police station in Chennai, with air-conditioned chambers, is shown in the second section of Visaranai. KK is tortured, and discussions take place in various rooms of the police station, which Vetrimaaran once more uses as an artistic element.

Third, in Nayattu and the movies of Prakkat/Kabir, the emphasis is on the background story and the psychological state of the main characters. Here, Maniyan and his ordeals are emphasized through close shots, body posture and facial expressions as the film traces his background and family story. This is also visible in another film, Charlie, directed by Prakkat, which develops a theme of the cop’s male anxiety, uncommon in hero cop movies. Here, close-ups of CI Maniyan show different levels of anxiety and fear as the narrative develops.

Also, in Vetrimaaran's use of stylistic devices in Visaranai, close-ups of Inspector Nageswar Rao and Muthuvel convey apprehension and fear. After receiving a reprimand from his superior to end the case, Nageshwar Rao nervously considers the hardships he should face if he fails to do well. Similarly, Muthuvel sees KK die in his custody; his close-ups of smoking cigarettes and weak body language show his reactions.

Fourth is the use of sequence shots in crucial movements of the films as a stylistic technique to give a sense of the lived realities of all the characters. Gopalan (2002) stresses that the Indian film industry, “despite its laments about state control, has been preoccupied with the withdrawal-of-the-camera technique as a crucial source of surplus pleasure.” Perhaps not for viewing pleasure, Visaranai and Nayattu utilize persistent views of the police stations to capture the entire event in totality within the normal day-to-day functioning. For instance, in Visaranai, the scene where Nageshwar Rao lies to the migrants that he is releasing them, and when they get food in the hotel outside, he catches them again and starts his torture with higher intensity. This a prolonged event to give a realist narrative about police brutality at work. The same style—a lengthy sequence without breaks—is used for the climax, which continues to give a realistic portrayal of how the various police officers behave when forced to frame innocent people and fabricate interactions.

Maniyan, after realising that they will be framed for the murder of Jayan (Nayattu, 2021).	Praveen and Sunitha feeling tensed while on the run (Nayattu, 2021).
Nageshwar Rao worried after a scolding from his senior officer (Visaranai, 2015).	Muthuvel thinking about his ordeal after KK’s death (Visaranai, 2015).

In Nayattu, Biju and his pals arriving at the police station, Biju and Maniyan fighting, and Biju’s subsequent lock-up are shown all in one sequence, in which the various characters' reactions and the spaces' are artistically depicted through a variety of camera angles. Additionally, the climax does the same. Here, Officer Anuradha learns of the three's hiding place and follows them until they discover Maniyan hanged. In this scene, the camera continuously switches between Maniyan, Praveen, and Anuradha as their rage and frustration with the system become more apparent.

Following this quick examination of visual style, we want to return our focus to the implicit narratives embedded in both the movies. Using textual analysis of Visaranai and Nayattu, we examine and evaluate the narrative framing of concepts. Here, we use Erving  Goffman's framing theory (1974) to analyze the film’s depiction of criminal investigation processes and their potential relation to the validity of evidence. Goffman's frame analysis leads us to look at how members of a criminal investigative team (re)construct crimes, how they search in certain directions, how they handle contradicting material, and how they sustain belief in their (re)construction (Salet, 2017). The plots of both films discussed in this article deal with the system’s construction of evidence to frame the innocent, especially by using coercion, power, and social status; the films thus dissect the political and cultural hegemony shaping the police system.

Maniyan’s honest expression to Praveen (Nayattu, 2021).

At the beginning of Nayattu, higher authorities assign Maniyan the duty of framing a youngster for a non-bailable offence. The night before, the lad had gone to his girlfriend's house to offer her a present. Since the girl is the minister's daughter, the boy must be framed to protect the minister's family and reputation. “Even thugs are free to accept or reject such orders, but we don't,” Maniyan tells Praveen as they head to the minister's house to frame the youngster. Maniyan goes to the minister’s house, puts petrol in the window and then makes him sign the statement: “‘the boy broke into our house last night and tried to kill all of us by putting fire in the house. He did this due to a property dispute.” This way he frames the innocent in a non-bailable offence.

Inspector Narayan Rao recreating the crime scene (Visaranai, 2015).

The four migrant Tamil workers in Visaranai are charged with breaking into the home of a senior official and stealing ten million rupees. The inspector and the station's constables torture the migrant laborers until they agree to the crime. After that, each of them is brought to the crime site to make up their role in how the heist was carried out. After escorting them to the house, inspector-in-charge Narayan Rao and his staff explain each person's involvement in the heist. Presumably, they broke in, choked the owner, stole the safe's keys, and then fled with the money. This fake reenactment would ensure they don’t mess up things when in court, and the magistrate cross-questions them for minute details of the crime.