Diwali is just round the corner & the theatres are flooded with movies across various languages. The two major Malayalam releases this week are Liju Krishna's "Padavettu" & Vysakh's "Monster". Since I was keen to check out both, it was down to the one whose show timings were in sync with my convenience & hence I got the tickets for the Nivin Pauly starrer. He has quite a few projects lined up for release & to his credit, almost all of them looks distinct. Well I had loved the trailer of his latest release but as opposed to that, the movie as such was damn slow & genuinely struggles to keep us invested in it for large parts.
This is Liju's directorial debut & he chose to trust his own writing skills for his maiden project. The primary theme was the exploitation of the poor & needy by the political parties for their financial gains. However, more often than not it is not easy to understand the manner in which such corporate parties operate since they project themselves as being mindful of the best interests of the public. The movie unfolds in a village in Northern Kerala where Ravi (Nivin) & his aunt, Pushpa (Remya Suresh) are chosen as the beneficiaries of Kuyyali's (Shammi Thilakan) (leader of a regional party) housing scheme. This was just the beginning of Kuyyali's plans & it remained to be seen to whether the people would be able to see through his ulterior motives before it was too late.
The main reason why it didn't work for me was the pace at which Liju has went about his task of revealing the story. It is excruciatingly slow & by the time, the first half ends we are left wondering as to whether anything worthwhile happened at all. I believe it kind of affected others as well since I did see quite a few fiddling with their mobiles during the show. However, things does move at a livelier pace in the latter half culminating in a predictable yet decent climax.
Though there are quite a few characters, none of them were well written & that includes Nivin also as the reason for his melancholy and the shift in his attitude felt way too vague and hasty. Both Deepak Mohan & Govind Vasantha deserves appreciation for their efforts in cinematography & BGM, while Shafique's editing could have been far more effective. Coming to performances, almost all of them have done their parts well be it Nivin, Shammi, Remya etc while Aditi, Indrans, Jaffer Idukki didn't have much to do.
Verdict: There is no doubt that the theme was relevant but the way it was shown on screen could have been far more better. In short, the choice is yours!!!
Rating: 2/5
Regards...Ben
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