Manoj Kumar R

in The Indian Express

Director Kiranraj K has bathed the world of Charlie in hues of soft and warm blue light filling each frame with a sense of calmness.

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Acharya is a classic good versus evil tale. And the story unfolds along excruciatingly predictable lines. The narration works like clockwork. A movie fan would be able to predict how the story will progress from the beginning to the end without much mental effort. There is not even a single surprise element in the movie as you can see all twists from a mile off. Koratala Siva heavily banks on the visual element that gives this film a mythological heft to keep the audience hooked. The writing is so poor that even the massive stardom of Chiranjeevi and Ram Charan feels inadequate to lift this movie. It’s a snooze fest. The town is soaked in red where one can’t tell vermilion from blood, evil men dress like sages, and unapologetic use of trishuls and spears, the god’s favourite tools of war, in butchering bad men add little value to our experience.

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Freedom Fight is easily the best anthology movie to come out in a long time. The ensemble of short stories has a significant literary value. Each episode in this movie leaves a deep impression on our psyche. All of the movies deal with some of the most important social problems of the country. And each of these films is narrated from the point of view of those who are less fortunate and who always end up getting a raw deal in the rigid power structure of our society.

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Lalitham Sundaram means simplicity is beauty. Simplicity, however, shouldn’t be confused with blandness. And that’s the mistake director Madhu Warrier and his writer Pramod Mohan have made with Lalitham Sundaram, which is now streaming on Disney Plus Hotstar. The very foundation of this movie is muddled with a lack of clarity on the filmmakers’ part. From the visual style to the tone and personal and relationship conflicts that this film tackles are devoid of a deep understanding or strong emotional core. The movie just puts up a shallow show of how the modern-day rat race is drawing a wedge between relationships and keeping loved ones apart.

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However, the screen presence of Dulquer and Mrunal does add a little vigour to the otherwise dull flow of narration. The film majorly rests on the good looks of its actors to make it tolerable.

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Vinoth’s idea of creating an urban legend goes awry when the film fails to distinguish Ajith’s offscreen persona from Ajith’s character in Valimai. The reference to Ajith’s passion for motorbikes is used as bait one too many times. And when the fans bite it, they are whipped into a frenzy. There is so much action on the screen but very little happens in every scene. The chase sequences play out on seemingly endless roads. Arjun keeps riding various types of bikes on streets, on highways, off-roads. And he even uses his bike to jump from one high-rise into another. The scene seems indebted to the Etihad Towers jump sequence in Furious 7. And all these action sequences don’t add up to anything bigger than the simple excitement of fans watching their favourite star pop a wheelie.

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The grimness and pretentious tone of the film is a dead giveaway of Sreenath V Nath’s cluelessness about the material he’s dealing with. The screenplay is full of errors that ruins the interest of the audience in the movie. The puzzles are too easy to solve, and narrative errors are so depressingly silly to forgive. The editing senselessly jumps from one scene to another and we are treated to camera movements, which have no meaning and do nothing to improve a mediocre story.

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Radha Mohan, who has also written the film, limits the Crazy Mohan-esque humour only to the film’s title, as the film fails to deliver in the writing department, with the use of tropes making the film feel outdated. For a film, which depends majorly on lie, deceit and adultery for humour, Malaysia to Amnesia is depressingly unwitty. The protagonist has very little contribution to drive the narrative forward. It is, in fact, his wife Sujatha (Vani Bhojan), uncle Mannaru (M.S. Bhaskar), and Prabhu (Karunakaran) who do all the talking. Vaibhav Reddy is as clueless as Radha Mohan when it comes to his character. Vani Bhojan gives a cute performance as a dutiful housewife, who never doubts her husband. And Bhaskar, as a curious man with a list of unending questions, singlehandedly carries the film with his energetic performance and makes it tolerable.

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Nayattu is as much a thriller as it is the indictment of the failure of the public to be reasonable. As long as the circus is good, we never really care what’s going behind the curtain. Writer Shahi Kabir’s strong and direct observations resonate with us considering how the power brokers use the media to whip up anger against a target that benefits them politically. Director Martin Prakkat has done a terrific job in visually bringing out all the keen observations of Kabir and painting a bigger picture of the system, which is bent to keep the public in dark.

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It has been a long wait to see director Selvaraghavan’s Nenjam Marappathillai in theatres. The film was stuck in a limbo for about four years for a host of reasons, which were beyond the control of the director. So was the film worth the years’ anticipation, eagerness, and wait? For a cinephile, the answer is a resounding yes. Nenjam Marappathillai is an unusual film; it is also a Selvaraghavan film. It would be silly for us to buy a ticket for a Selvaraghavan film, expecting to see a straight-forward narration without surreal themes and metaphorical reality. I believe this director outgrew that phase in his artistic evolution when he made Aayirathil Oruvan over a decade ago.

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The film’s half-baked comments on realities that drive the business of mainstream films in Malayalam is another letdown. The film wastes time repeating the obvious and well-known facts for the sake of sounding bold and conscious. The major drawback of Sara’S is that every character in this film is agreeable to a fault. The conservative setting, the outdated belief of women don’t need a life outside family, and hardliners in Sara’s family, who believe in women’s traditional roles, fail to create any dramatic tension in the narration. Sara’S works as an educational film. It could start a conversation in conservative households on subjects that are touted as beyond discussions. Like a pregnancy is God’s will, and humans, especially women, don’t get to have a say in it. But, artistically, it feels inadequate.

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To director-writer Rahul Sankrityan’s credit, the film’s hero lives and fights by the pen, instead of resorting to violence. The period portions of the film is a sight for sore eyes. The retro look of Nani and Sai Pallavi oozes charm. Pallavi’s classical dance performance draped in a red saree is a sight to behold. Just her presence on the screen elevates a scene to another level. The period set pieces are minimal but effective. And the night shots under the moonlight are soothing. I was surprised by how the movie handled the issue of honor killing. Usually, when we hear those words in movies, by default, we assume a woman as its victim. But, we rarely associate a man falling victim to this evil. And also Rahul’s bold move of the generous use of Bengali dialogues in the movie is noteworthy.

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The film’s high production values and strong emotional beats makes it an engrossing watch. Director Bakkiyaraj Kannan’s solidity expands on the belief that men are naturally good. The seasoned criminals who make the entire city shiver are powerless in front of Sulthan. They don’t raise a finger even when Sulthan pushes them around. The film also tracks the inner journey of the protagonist who learns that he can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs. Every scene in the movie works both emotionally and logically. Bakkiyaraj composes scenes that allow him to take full advantage of the cinematic experience of showing 100-strong men dance in a battle formation. There are a few Zack Snyder-esque cinematic moments, especially in the climactic action sequence.

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The grave failing of Vignesh is he fails to make the audience care for what’s going on in the film. One can only wish that he had an alternative approach to the plot that effectively used the cleverness of his idea. You know that film has failed to achieve its desired impact when its creator finds it necessary to add a voice-over at the end to hit you over the head with the film’s message, afraid he may not have accomplished it in the last two hours.

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We are not promising this film has twists and turns and concepts that you have never heard before,

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