The Chronicles Of The 4.5 Gang Is Uneven, Yet Entertainingly Solid

“YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING about postmodern narrative”, bemoans the Malayalam writer, ghost writing a novel for a small-time, but battle-hardened, world-weary gangster from Thiruvanchipuram. The gangster is narrating his admittedly short but eventful story of adult life, his criminal escapades with four other friends. Crime wasn’t the choice they made. It was a byproduct of all their attempts to legitimise their lives out of oppression, a ticket out of their matchbox-sized slums. Arikuttan, charmingly played by Sanju Sivram, sits across writer Maithreyan, veteran in spirit (played by Jagadish) as well as pedigree, and tells him to go easy on the colourful digressions that the writer plucks out of his imagination. But Maithreyan wants that postmodern flourish, that bite of a story that functions as an adventure with an immediate judgment call laced with irony. It’s not surprising. The writer and director is Krishand, and the Sony LIV web series Sambhava Vivaranam Nalarasangham, or The Chronicles of the 4.5 Gang, has his stamp all over.

If anything, Krishand is prolific. In six years, he’s made four features—Vrithakrithyilulla Chathuram, Aavasavyuham, Purusha Pretham and The Art of Warfare, all directed by him, along with one interesting co-producing credit—Gaganachari. While there is news that his fifth feature is almost ready, The Chronicles of the 4.5 Gang has about six fifty-minute episodes. Krishand’s interest tends towards those postmodern affectations of edgy anti-heroes, those seemingly operating on the fringes of society, only revealing that they are the very oxygen when we peel the layers. Crime, comedy and irony go hand in hand here with one eye in a squint and tongue firmly in cheek. While one could argue that this style can easily be passe or overdone, there are still interesting flourishes up Krishand’s sleeves, and the 4.5 gang adds to it.

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The Chronicles of the 4.5 Gang follows five friends—Arikuttan (Sanju Sivaram), Althaf (Niranj Maniyan Pillai), Kanji (Sreenath Babu), Maniyan (Shambu Menon) and Moonga (Sachin). The 0.5 refers to Moonga missing the growth spurt, and as a helpful addendum, like everything else, there is Maithreyan’s treatise on political correctness in fiction early on. The habit of kicking around with the rest of the world kicks them straight out of school into a life that they are too naïve to live, and meeting a corrupt police officer, SI Suresh (Rahul Rajagopal), they learn new but underhanded ways to make money. The web series shifts between Arikuttan narrating their story to Maithreyan in Maharashtra during the early 2010s and their gang’s inchoate days in the early 90s.

Krishand’s narrative is a mixed bag. It is a seesaw that balances style and pop glamour traditionally associated with the gangster genre conventions on one side and a more straightforward truth-seeking tale of men encountering reality on the other side. Every step of the way, the series spices up their realities behind how the boys become men and immediately undercuts the arc with a deglamorising highlight that strips all the associated aura. Their bravura makes an appearance in a flash, disappears, and what remains is a half-ridiculous, half-melancholic residue of their life in a snapshot. Even as we get a showy, ostentatious shot of action, the narrative insists that these are small-time gangsters who deal in products like milk and flowers. The narrative bounces between timelines, and more than timelines, it bounces between Maithreyan’s perceived reality and the actual history that Arikuttan recounts. The writer repeatedly insists on building up the characters, making someone a villain or adding more myth to the proceedings.

The passage of their almost decade-long story is fluid, but behind all the ghost writing and author-backed characters, a question of legitimacy creeps in. What’s the truth, and what is the mythical retelling wrapping Maithreyan’s tall tales? Krishand leaves it open for us to wonder. Arikuttan wants to tell a more affecting story of how he and his friends emerged from the slums of Thadippalam with only aspirations in mind when they began their various capitalist endeavours. The Chronicles of the 4.5 Gang is ostensibly about how five men from the oppressed caste take the system on, even as they are crushed right under it to make a life of dignity with their humanity and pride intact. With a ghost writer added to the mix, their story takes on a larger-than-life turn where blood, violence and revenge take precedence, where good and evil become a matter of perspective.

The six episodes are packed but compact, each delving into a phase of their life. We begin in their school and move on to their explosive-but-petty beginnings with local rivalries. The second episode dramatises their story with the police officer Suresh taking advantage of them under his watch. Things get serious in episode three, and the gang enters a point of no return in their ventures — the law, for them, now a fly to swat, and the world under their feet. The fourth episode is when their lows are as tall as their highs as they encounter resistance from the most unexpected quarters in the neighbouring state. The final two episodes tease the life they always aspired for, only by now, their sins catch up with them. Through all this, we get the delectable asides and black comedy, like when Arikuttan is narrating a serious incident, Maithreyan offers him some appam, only to get a nonchalant refusal citing gas.

Krishand’s script and direction are strewn with these underlined moments, a commentary built over commentary and storytelling. Sometimes it can grate, like when the focus is on the personal or romantic lives of the protagonists—mainly Arikuttan and Maniyan—the ironic gaze doesn’t translate as smoothly. But it is once again a visually rich but also modest outing from Krishand, not ambitious with wild swings like Purusha Pretham, but something safer, yet interesting. The Malayalam web series ecosystem is still nascent, and for a modest scale, a sprawling story like this gets a great platform without sacrificing the look and feel. The aesthetics, like the wild, colourful palette, quick and close-up action, and claustrophobic controlled outdoor locations, add to the story rather than making it look artificial. And that is much to Krishand and his team’s credit. It might be uneven in parts, but it works as a solid web series entry in Malayalam.

The Chronicles of the 4.5 Gang is now streaming on Sony LIV, available with your OTTplay Premium subscription. Watch the web series here.