Masterpiece

Masterpiece was and is one of the most waited films of this year. Its lead cast comprising of Mammootty, Unni Mukundan, Varalaxmi Sarathkumar and Poonam Bajwa, a newcomer. The film also houses many young stars who are stuggling to find a place in Malayalam cinema, so kudos to the casting director for such a impressive array of young talents.

The film was touted as a mass, action thriller early on itself. After Rajadhiraja, a miserable failure from Ajai Vasudev, comes Masterpiece. It puts itself against a background of a college, where students are split into several factions. A subsequent crime and its events follow up the film's plot. The acting was commendable by the lead cast, although the quirky handling of the camera made it look kind of ugly. The direction is in all praise for a mass film, which Ajai handled perfectly.

If not titled and promoted as a mass entertainer, Masterpiece would have been a stunning failure. Aside from Mammootty's impressive performance, coupled with some really good fight scenes, Masterpiece falls flat at every department. Unni Mukundan, was not a surprise casting since he is known for his excellence in action roles and scenes.

The entire film hangs on the climax, which may come surprising for many.

Rating - 3.75 / 10.0

An average viewer can simply guess the climax. There is no logic in the storyline. The guest role of captain raju was a complete disaster. Totally, a bad movie.

A movie which is intended just for mass. There were mass movies released in Malayalam in the past. Narasimham, Araam Thamburaan, The King, Raavanaprabu, etc. are few of them. But what makes 'Masterpiece' different from them is, this one is just 'mass' without any class.

The director relied mainly on the charisma of Mammootty to take this movie forward. There were many glitches in the script of Uday Krishna. There are so many unnecessary irrelevant scenes scripted to this entertainer which takes away the class of this movie. For example, all scenes of Captain Raju, a scene of script-writer Uday, too many fights, etc were unnecessary and atrocious. Also, the way college life is portrayed in the movie seems highly artificial as it gave you a feeling that the college is just for fighting and showoffs. The climax of the movie and the last minute revelation about the hero character sounds kiddish and not credible at all.

Now coming to the performance, Mammootty looks young and energetic, and easily credited with the star of the show. Unni Mukundhan and Varalaksmi gave a stellar performance, Mahima Nambiar was underutilized ( as a young talented actress, she could have rejected this silly role), whereas Poonam Bajwa gave us a mockery.

This is an honest review from the heart of a Mammotty fan. There are some mass scenes for a Mammootty fan to cheer, but at the end once you are done with the movie, you will feel an emptiness and a sigh that this movie could have been made better.

One can complete watching Ajai Vasudev's latest feature with only agitation in mind. There's no way else one can endure 155 minutes of mindless sequences that cross all levels of logic or sense. Mammootty plays a dashing English professor in a government college currently embroiled in a crime thriller saga of its own. The students come to college not to study but to engage in gang rivalries and eve-teasing. Despite having poor knolwedge in phonetics, the professor plays an intelligent detective-cum-good Samaritan-cum-angel guardian-cum-loverboy who helps a group of students in a murder case that has put the studies of the college in hold for the time being. Nothing is logical in the film as one can easily predict in a Vasudev film. Moreover, the mass entertainment that it promises is only restricted to people who love watching human bodies flying in the air for minutes long and characters walking in slow motion. I even have this theory that if they had made Mammootty's character not walk in slow motion but in regular fashion, the film would have been 30 minutes shorter. And talking about editing, the first 20 minutes look like the makers forgot to hire an editor as random sequences play in front of you. With Poonam Bajwa as the eye candy and Unni Mukundan as this superhero cop, Masterpiece again tries to define heroism by giving power and convenience to the protagonist who seems to be more interested in crime than Chaucer. All in all, other than a captivating death sequence at the end, there is nothing worth watching in Masterpiece, easily one of the worst films of 2017. TN.

An okay suspense thriller + mass heroism scenes but not a class one. Mammootty's screen presence was good to watch and fights stunts were great. Not a great storyline and screenplay,last 30 mins was very engaging.