Marakkar Movie Review

Filmmaker Priyadarshan has always enjoyed a privilege of retaining his fan base in spite of delivering flops consistently. The major portion of his directorial venture has been remakes and adaptations from Malayalam to Tamil to Hindi. However, his magnum opus ‘Kaalapaani’ (Siraichaalai in Tamil) released before couple of decades is still acclaimed for its emotional value, outstanding music, and his brilliant directorial proficiency. In fact, some of the hard-hitting scenes still run fresh through our minds, when we think about this title. Be it the freedom fighters being stamped brutally by the British soldiers or the final shot, where Tabu with veil of her sari waits at the railway station only to see transition to her grey hair that shouts out on her painful yearning for her beau to return, without even knowing about his pathetic culmination. These scenes eventually left lump in our throats. When the posters of Maraikkayar: Arabikadalin Singam popped up, the first thing that struck our attention was the combination of Kaalapaani heroes Mohanlal and Prabhu sharing the screen space together again. However, what we get from this movie is completely in contrast to their yesteryear flick.

The story is set against the backdrops of 16th century revolving around Kunjali Marakkar IV (Mohanlal), the naval chieftain of the Zamorin of Calicut, and his organisation of Indias first-ever naval defence against European force.

To start off with the analysis, the first positive that strikes our attention are the brilliant visuals. Be it cinematography or the visual effects, the team has done a colossal work. The sound department is the backbone of this film, which in few places, might look exaggerated (Where three horses tapping the ground sound is resonated as 100 numbers). On the flip side, there are lots of flaws in the storytelling method. Everything looks so predictable. There’s a particular scene, where Mohanlal’s character keeps sensing someone walking in the shadows to kill him, and the voice of his mother’s soul wakes him up. But guess what? Manju Warrier is the only woman in that camp. Even the antagonist’s role (played by Ashok Selvan) looks so silly, where his so-called intellectual smart moves make even the kids feel ridiculous. Mohanlal’s screen presence is good. But being a war movie, we don’t see him involved in one action sequence continuously for more than a minute, except for those CG sequences involving jumps. It looks like Priyadarshan wasn’t just smug-bitten by the Baahubali impact, but several period series in Netflix. Arjun has done a commendable job and Hareesh Peradi’s role is emotional, where his performance is outstanding.

On the whole, a film like Maraikkayar: Arabikadalin Singam that is made on a real martyr calls forth an intense making. But it’s disappointing to see most of our Indian filmmakers for the sake of commercial gain or misusing this genre and stories of legends with not so engaging treatment.