August 15 Malayalam Film Review

August 15 is a well made suspense thriller written by SN Swamy and directed by Shaji Kailas.It cannot be termed as an excellent edge of the seat thriller since at many points pace do drop,but for most of the part director has been able to keep the viewer hooked.

An assassination attempt is made on chief minister,and police officer Perumal is assigned the task of foiling any further attempt as well as to find the assassin.But the assassin turns out to be wily,cunning,an expert at disguises who has been able to evade the police with ease. The cat and mouse game between assassin and Perumal begins where both try to upstage each other.The aftermath of this is that assassin becomes determined to carry out his mission since he is someone who cannot tolerate failure,who is a psychopath who destroys anyone in his path to achieve his objective.The film looks at this dangerous battle of control between the police officer and the criminal,with a surprising conclusion which takes you unawares when the dust settles towards the end.

Shaji Kailas films usually include Kerala politics and it is clear in this film that where his political affiliations lean towards to.Any astute viewer could see that on whom the chief minister in the film and party secretary is modelled on.Even though it gets little bit on the nerves,the chief minister here is portrayed as paragon of virtues,a so called perfect person which is hard to believe and I feel director who modelled it on real life personality has gone little bit overboard and seems to have mastered the art of flattery.Then again this is not an important thing since fortunately the focus of the film is not on hardcore politics but on the investigation aspect and here unlike previous Shaji films,tone is somewhat subdued.Fortunately there is no unnecessary fireworks in the form of bombastic dialogues and too much of slow motion walk by the hero.The inner politics among the police department is depicted,but it has not gone overboard.

As a director,Shaji kailas has not let the viewer down.The film is technically sound.The chase scene between Perumal and assassin is well handled.Talking about performances,there is nothing exceptional in the role played by Mammootty.As is usual is the case he has been able to deliver.Siddique as the psychopathic assassin has also done justice to the role.He has been able to bring out the various shades of gray convincingly required of this character.Jagathi unfortunately is little bit off color here.Generally a reliable performer,but here his character sort of didn't gel with the movie.Lalu Alex ,Vijay are quite adequate in their roles. Back ground music by Rajamani suits this genre type film.

My Rating: ABOVE AVERAGE

Karyasthan Malayalam Film Review

Malayalam film industry always has this fascination for films related to warring families and then their happy reunion at the end.The story line of these type of films will be similar,there will be two powerful families in a village run by patriarchs with a dozen children who initially will be close friends,but due to some misunderstanding perpetuated by a villain,will become bitter enemies and their enmity will span decades until some one preferably from younger generation will set things right,whereby the villain is caught and at the end every one sings a happy song and all ends well.The story line of Karyasthan is also somewhat similar.Not only the story is one regurgitated many times before,I feel there is only one word to describe this film,and that is the word "silly".Yes this film is really silly,with its low standard comedy,manipulative emotional scenes,over acting and to add nail on the coffin,irritating songs.

Unni wants to reunite his father with his relatives,who banished him to a remote Tamil Nadu village when he married against their wish.So he sets on a journey along with his best friend Vadivelu to his grandfather's house to meet the objective of reuniting his grandfather's and his best friend's family.The film looks at the hilarious sequences that follow when he lands up at the house and take up the job of a caretaker.The film follows the usual pattern of love affairs,again misunderstanding,and it is of course the duty of the hero the emerge triumphant by demolishing the villain and needless to say everything is rosy at the end with every one singing the traditional family song in their best traditional attire.

Dilip is no doubt a good actor and this type of roles suit him,but if he wants to be taken as a serious actor,he should avoid this type of repetitive roles.Then again one cannot blame him,since he is typecast in this type of roles and if audience want this type of substandard stuff then who can blame him.Suraj as his best friend is able to evoke some laughs and that is only because of his natural talent rather than anything to do with the script.Two talented artists Salim Kumar and Harisree Ashokan are wasted in roles which require them to do overacting with the same set of expressions which they have done in countless movies before.

As such it was really a pain to sit through this boring film with tons of actors floating here and there and mouthing serial standard dialogues,there is no point in wasting time on analyzing the acting department.The direction is really poor,silly coincidences,poor script and thousands of other things I don't have time to point out.One of the worst films I have seen in my life.

My Rating: POOR    

Arjunan Sakshi Malayalam Film Review

There are some films which start of with a bang,gives you high hopes and then fizzles out towards the end.Arjun Sakshi is one such film.It had a promising start,but then ends up like just like another action film with the standard set of villains and the common man ranting against the system,which we have seen in many Malayalam films before. In spite of the flaws,the film do highlight some of the issues a fast growing city like Kochi face like the hardships common man face due to traffic jams and how some selfish people could derail people centric projects for their benefit.

A prominent newspaper receives an anonymous letter in which the writer claims to be the witness to the murder of Rashid Moopan,former collector.The newspaper publishes this,and the journalist who received this letter is threatened by an anonymous caller to disclose the identity of the writer.Roy,an architect is misunderstood as Arjun,the anonymous writer by the people involved in the murder of Moopan.This film looks at how Roy gets caught in this web from which he cannot extricate himself without causing damage,and how he tries to overcome that.

Even though the film is interesting on some levels,the way in which Roy trapped the villains,look too simplistic.Even if there is a witness to a murder,unless there is physical evidence,it is something difficult to prove.So the villans becoming paranoid seems to be created just to give the platform for the hero to win.Also I did not understand the logic behind the killing of Rashid's father.Coming to the execution of the film,director has been able to extract good performances from almost all actors,but falters when it comes to the action scenes.It is true that Malayalam films have budgetary constraints,so it is difficult to pull off heavy duty action scenes.So best option is not to atempt that and fail.The chase scene is not properly executed and looked amateurish.The final stunt scene with the four villains is also not able to make any impact.Even though primarily a comic actor,Jagathi has excelled in playing various type of characters and found success,but here in the role of Rashid's father he is not convincing.There seems to be too much of a conscious effort to get into that character,a neurosurgeon that it sort of looks artificial.Prithviraj even though stiff in some scenes has been able to do justice to the role.As such none of the other characters stand out,they all seems to be like cardboard copies you find in a typical action film,so there is no point in discussing the acting merits or demerits.

The background music is in tone with the film and is well done.The songs are nothing much to write about.They are just about there to fill in the gaps.

My Rating: BELOW AVERAGE

Best Actor Malayalam Film Review

'Best Actor' is an example of a film,which on script looks promising but when implemented do not look as plausible or interesting as in the script.This is what happens here also.A film with many implausible scenes,weakness in script,attempt to play to the gallery by creating unnecessary melodramatic scenes,irritating background score when combination of all these factors come together,what you get is an interesting concept gone wrong.

Mohan is a school teacher with the ambition to become an actor in a movie.His entire life is dedicated to achieve this objective where by he even ignores his loving wife and son.When a group of assistant directors planning to make an action film make fun of him and insist that he should have real life experience of a thug,he literally believes it due to his innocent nature and starts living with four real life thugs.The film looks at the hilarious sequences that follow when he encounters professional thugs and his real life merges with the reel life he dreams on.

Credit has to be given that good actors like Venu,Lal,Salim Kumar have been able to master the local slang and make these colorful characters interesting,but a 2.5 hour movie just do not depend on just characterization,but should have an adept screenplay to hold the attention of viewer.This fact is sadly missing here.Also Lal's overacting at some scenes is off-putting.As a director Martin shines in parts,but not able to do justice in some scenes.An example which comes to mind is where the assistant directors indoctrinate Mohan with the Vivek Oberoi story.This scene do not come off naturally and seems to be fake and artificial.The actors also seems to be trying too hard to make an impact.Baiju in the role of police inspector is not convincing,and those scenes are also not handled properly.

Mammootty unfortunately is also not in his elements and in many scenes he looks stiff and uninterested.The hindi dialogue scene is really cringe worthy and embarrassing.The songs are not memorable and there is an irritating humming at melodramatic scenes.The objective seems to appeal to the emotional aspect of the viewer,but unfortunately I don't think anyone would be moved.As such I will concede that there are some really good,realistic dialogues which implies some hard work has gone into the dialogues.At least on that aspect the dialogue writer should be given credit.

My Rating: BELOW AVERAGE