Mikhael Movie First Day First Impression: A Mindless Action Movie With No Room For Subtlety

 Language: Malayalam

Cast: Nivin Pauly, Manjima Mohan, Unni Mukundan

Director: Haneef Adeni

1) This is not what you'd call the typical Nivin Pauly film, as was made amply clear in the film's two teasers. This is more for the star and his fans rather than the actor.

2) One may choose to disagree, but there's a lot of fans for Haneef Adeni's style of cinema and Mikhael is an attempt to bring in a younger star to see if the director can re-create what Mammootty managed in The Great Father.

3) A lot of the core ideas of Mikhael too is very similar to The Great Father. They might as well have called it The Great Brother. Nivin plays Michael, or as it is made clear almost every five minutes, he's also Mikhael, the guardian angel.

4) This film also manages the impossible.  A majority of its duration is in slow motion.  Amal Neerad himself would be proud.

5) The Christian symbols, motifs and references are aplenty.  No stone is left unturned to remind us of how clever the film is for its biblical themes and dialogues.

6) A lot could have been forgiven had the film's punches landed. But even the action scenes are unoriginal and unexciting. This again depends on how easily one can buy into the fact that Nivin Pauly is an agile fighter trained in Karate.

7)  The villains are disappointing too. Far too much time is spent to establish Siddique as the villain only for his chapter to be closed quite easily. The same goes with half a dozen other bad guys. Unni Mukundan, the most adept at action scenes, manages to do a little more though.

8) It's also a film where its heroine, Manjima Mohan, has nothing to do. Isn't it a bit disturbing for mass commercial films of younger stars to continue on the same tradition?

9) One of the major problems with the film is how a lot of the 'story' is written around a 'mass' punch scene. This is why everything seems like a punch dialogue…no one is actually talking in the film.

10) Well there's a lot that could have been done with the concept of a doctor going on a rampage, but Mikhael remains yet another mass action film that doesn't respect the audience.