Freedom at midnight

Imagine Visaranai meeting The Shawshank Redemption at a Kottayam sub-jail and you may arrive at the high-concept Malayalam thriller Swathanthryam Ardharathriyil. The movie is about Jacob (Antony Varghese), a manager at a finance firm, who is behind bars for allegedly stealing money and protecting his girlfriend from made-up murder charges. Most of the movie is about him finding accomplices to dig a tunnel beneath the prison to burrow his way to freedom.

Debut director Tinu Pappachan has elevated a generic plot to a rambunctiously entertaining ride solely on the basis of jaw-dropping gags. Pappachan, a former associate director to Lijo Jose