Ishq follows the story of two youngsters who are harassed by a couple of men while spending some quality time together on a fateful night. This is typical of Malayalam cinema – Take a simple yet interesting premise and weave a complex and layered screenplay around it. The story is a one liner if you just look from the outside. But the moment to begin to dwell deeper in the narrative, you realize how this is so much more than harassments. The screenplay moves at a break neck pace here. It is quick to introduce you to the characters and soon get to the eventual event. This is when the screenplay prompts the audience to be a silent spectator to the whole proceedings. It is able to take you into the psyche of the victim and the perpetrators. The entire sequence is spine chilling yet there is a thread of masculinity attached to it. The fact that the guy asks his girlfriend on what did he do instead of if she was okay, speaks volumes of the road ahead.

The second hour is when the revenge begins after a couple of predictable twists and turns. The tables turn here and this is an equally harrowing experience, similar to the one in the first half. But I was more interested in how things would end considering that the two halves were similar. It was heading towards a meek end and this is where I thought that the film made ado about nothing really. But boy was I wrong! The open ending is one of the most terrific endings which I have seen recently. It hit him at a point where it hurt the most, yet where I least expected it. It was a phenomenal ending to a great film and this is the reason why Malayalam films are way ahead of any other industry. They are willing to take risks and they ensure they are pulled off well!