Sharon Elizabeth Varghese

The most frequently hyped up movie "Marakkar - lion of the Arabian Sea" was nothing but a bitter disappointment to watch on screen. While accepting the facts that its a historical piece of story recreated, the movie did not do any justice in terms of script, screenplay and storyline. The movie highlighted the trailer with senior artists establishing a high end anticipation, however some of the characters did not have any relevance. Female characters had absolutely no relevance in the story. With due respect to the hardwork and toil behind the movie, the poor construction of screenplay and structure of delivery created much lag and lack of interest. A commonly noticed evident factor was the replication of scenes from the epic movie "Troy". The visual and dolby sound effects were used brilliantly however the effects cannot help the narration of weak storyline. The story is narrated on a fragile and slow mode thread (which is understandable to some extent), but the movie is predictable and the sequences are sort of a given. To top it all Marakkar is titled as "Lion of Arabian sea" and again there is an exquisite dialogue delivered by Arjun Sarja mentioning "Marakkar - the one who knows the magic tricks of ocean". The ridiculous part about this line is that audience gets no clue as to how that line proves true at any point in the story. The entire movie praises "Kunjali" (Mohanlal's protagonist role), with an absolute disregard to the fact why would the hero stand significant. That extraordinary wow factor just doesn't exist anywhere in the movie. Again the casting was certainly made evident that its director Priyadarshan's personal taste of repeated set of artists. The characters did not have any award winning performances to project (while the movie already bagged the awards before release). To speak about Mohanlal - I understand that he was chosen considering his close ties with Priyadarshan, artist calibre & value and several other factors. That being said Mohanlal is just not the right person to cast this character due to his gigantic appearance. His age is certainly evident even if we try to show all kinds of superpowers under one movie. The hero just fills up the entire film screen leaving no room to show why is the protagonist remarkable.The quick transformation of "Kunjali's" character from Pranav to Mohanlal on big screen appears from 30 years old to 60 years old transition, which doesn't give any kind of worth watching experience to convince and stimulate the interest in audience. When we have seen better talent and performance from Mohanlal, this was definitely not the best from him. For people who are familiar with malayalam dialects, we can clearly see that Mohanlal's dialogue delivery did not suit to convey Kozhikkodan dialect. He has proved this right in his previous movie with Priyadarshan (Kilichundan Mampazham). With regard to other artists, Fazil Sir seemed to be a fresh appearance. Siddique, Sunil Shetty, Nedumudi Venu, Hareesh Peradi and Srikant Murali are some notable and commendable characters to the amplified movie "Marakkar". Manju Warrier was unnecessary element in the story with no rational purpose. Movie making is indeed the sacrifice, hardwork and dedication of several people collaborated under one roof, but this so called movie "Marakkar" created unnecessary hype to set an exceptional movie experience in theatre with the above mentioned weak elements. Overall its a just a one time watch if you have the patience to sit for 3 hours.