Ajith Prasad Edassery

Terrible movie with lackluster direction, technicals, average songs and a bunch of poor actors (especially in their old age makeup). Vineeth Sreenivasan and cronies should stay away from the same mould of taking movies with the same old boring crew (and even worse... the same formula of inserting nostalgic dialogues and bgm from their own old movies and other hit movies). The movie is not just cliche but a poor imitation of many movies like Udayananu Tharam etc. At 2:45 hours it's painfully long too. Best avoided!

It's a poorly crafted propaganda movie which had a theatrical release aligned ahead of the Karnataka elections and the hijab issue. Now it's back with a delayed OTT release well-timed just before the general elections. As a Malayali Hindu, staying in a peaceful village locality in Kerala surrounded by Christians and Muslim families alike, I find most of the things mentioned and communicated in this movie highly objectionable and mal-intended. Of course, there has been a few religious conversions, a handful of people who got radicalized and joined ISIS etc but this number is very negligible, nothing close to what is being propagated by this movie. And the ease at which these girls (as shown in the movie) falling for the so called religious trap, is laughable and non-convincing in a poor, hastily conceived script! Even worse is how they have touched upon the gang rape etc of another victim there. Mind you, Kerala has one of the best Police Departments that files FIRs for even the smallest of cases and it's not UP or Bihar in that sense. Walk into any police station in Kerala and you will see the difference. As for the script, direction and technical perfection of this movie, it's a very ordinary movie in all respects. The lead actress is a very poor actor indeed. The way, the Kerala life is picturized is nowhere close to reality and I wonder whether even the locations chosen are any close to the same. It's annoying to listen to accented, short Malayalam dialogues that are plugged in at every three or four sentences, just for the sake of it. The terrain used for shooting overseas seems to be a limited stretch and repeatedly shown. And it's funny to see only a couple of Mahindra and Tata pickup trucks being shown in ISIS lands as against the typical Mazdas, Nissans and Toyotas. Poor art direction, indeed. On top of this some weird and untimely BGMs not matching with the situation is another issue. And the songs are given typical Malayalam songs like tune, but with Hindi lyrics giving it a funny feel. On the positive side, some of the senior actors shown in the movie have rendered commendable and matured performance. The camera work is very good in most parts. Overall, a non-satisfying and mal-intended experience, purely targeted at a section of the society and the Kerala administration as a whole, by picking random examples, for political gains alone.

While the storyline and script are overall good, there is a sense of visual incompleteness as they don't seem to have enough photos or videos of the victims, witnesses as well as the perpetrators. They haven't put in a wholehearted effort to grab more such assets. This impacted the overall quality of the documentary. Even when they show silhouettes of individuals, they look different at different times.

Excellent Technicals, Cinematography, Action Sequences - Night shots, Minimal but effective VFX etc are major positives. Average Script and Direction - It's a semi documentary style movie. After all, we already know the story if not all details but some family aspects of the soldiers etc have been added to give it a movie touch. Realistic parts: The brilliant opening scene, Actual operation.planning and execution, depiction of early setbacks that India received in North East and Kashmir, War cry from the martyred soldier's daughter, Primary involvement of NSA and PM and not the Defence, Home or MEA ministries. Unrealistic parts: The role of couple of heroines, depicting the enemy nation as a bunch of unfit jokers, "Garuda" drone from Vishnupurana developed by DRDO project trainee and put to use, Bollywood style fist fights with terrorists etc are high on jingoism just to tap into the emotions of the average movie goer. Casting: Vicky Koushal and the key soldiers have done a good job without being overdramatic. Not sure if Paresh Rawal was the right fit for this role - felt he was struggling to deliver some English dialogues. The PM, Parrikar, Sushma, Rajnath Singh roles are there only for their exact looks of those real life characters and not much of acting potential or even adequate dialogues. In fact, they are mostly deprived of direct facing shots by the cameraman. Heroines are kind of underutilized as one would expect in an Army movie. Nevertheless, it's a very good tribute to the Indian Army, discounting the minimal masala added. PS:- The timing of this movie release (and the other one on MMS) in run up to the elections is really a masterstroke from the present government and its media strategists. Especially with some of the staunch supporters like Rawal, Kher etc in key roles.

The first part was way better (although dragged a bit) and very good effort had gone in there to set the foundation. Unfortunately, the second part is all about his Chaithanya Ratha Yatra and often marred by the melodramatic acting by Balakrishna. (I could be biased here). To put things into perspective, Yatra, another similar movie on YSR was propelled by Mammootty's powerful acting and this one wasn't to be as effective as that. His looks indeed was well suited for NTR senior. Vidya Balan has done very well in a measured manner, and so is Sachin Khedekar while Rana Daggubati is still in his Bahubali mannerisms and expression that didn't suit this movie at all. The film ended abruptly with the death of NTR's wife. In fact, a big part of his personal and political life was left untold, where in he married Shiva Parvati, Political Coup by Naidu, NTR's end etc. It looked like the director had actually planned for another 20-30 minutes? Overall 2 / 5 would be my rating. (And the Election Commission should really pitch in and put an end to these kind of propaganda movies just before the elections. Be it on YSR, NTR, Modi or MMS)

Watched on Amazon Prime and hence no regret of losing money. It's a revenge story packed with lots of similar looking action scenes, poor acting by even senior actors. A movie that doesn't keep you interested at any point of time. A bulky Movin Pauly with no expressions on his face is a disaster. The mass that people are talking about is probably his belly mass? :-) Siddique's calm faced villain role was the best of the numerous villain characters in this movie. Unni Mukundan's muscle villain's role is not scripted well (literally so many theettam dialogues too for him) 1.5 / 5

I had very high expectations from this movie but sorry to say that it's a poorly taken movie (mainly the script) that tries to portray a proud ISRO scientist like some know-all and smarter-than-all-others super hero. This script not only makes compatriot legends like Kalam, Sarabhai, Dhawan, Rao etc as people inferior to Nambi but also makes some foreign scientists and professors look like fools (special pleasure that we draw when Indians outsmart whites?). In the hunt of jingoism, some names like Tata, Kohinoor, Colonial history, Indian culture references etc are thrown at you at regular intervals and sometimes even in an untimely manner. The main fault of the movie is the script itself and these people should learn how to make biopics even when it involves technical jargons etc. Whenever, technical terms are thrown at you, it just forms some kind of ambiguity and discontinuity in the whole thread. We have great respect for Nambi sir and blame our system for allowing such a tragedy to happen in his life and career, but come on, let's try to make quality, realistic stories and less of masala. Basically a bit of overacting, unrealistic, over-dramatised incidents overshadowed the false spy case from the angle of how the CBI, IB, and the Police (mis)handled it or that part lacked emphasis and clarity. We love Madhavan in his love story roles, and in movies like 3 Idiots but not sure if his acting is good enough in this kind of a role. And as a Director, well, he is very ordinary.