A commendable film with a close-to-perfect script, some timely performances from the artistes and technical wizardry that is on par with the rest of the regional language films. All said, this movie also gives an insight about the history of Kerala which was unsung of. The story of a young hero who gave all he had to save his land from the Portuguese. And another factor which is quite apt was running the the present world and the old version in parallel.
All said and done, the writer had a source material to rely on and he showered enough fictional characteristics to the story. In spite of that the script lacks a cohesiveness especially until the third act. Some of the dialogue's were sloppy and did not reflect of that of that particular time period. Other than that this was a fine effort. Santosh Sivan's camera-work: there needs no special mention of his work here. Everything is picture perfect. Some scenes evokes a plethora of feelings and it just stays even after the movie gets over. But there were points and sequences where a bit of a pause could have helped a lot in making things look and feel much more better especially in the war scenes towards the end.
Performance-wise I would say all have done an exceptional job especially Prabhudeva, Nitya Menon, Jagathi. Prithviraj's wooden voice is a big letdown though. He shows no sign of variation through the movie. But he got to save his face towards the end with some classic performance and expression variations. Nitya Menon was the perfect seducer. Never seen such a good seducer in our industry. Her eyes speak volumes.
Music by Deepak Dev was different in this. His usual themes were all gone. It was a good thing he went in for a re-invention. Good songs and average BGM. The BGM that plays when Prithviraj courts Genelia is pure awesomeness but again there is huge familiarity with the tone there.
All in all this was a good movie. Definitely worth a watch at the cinemas. Go for it. It is a different experience all together.
