CBI 5

Glad to see Jagathy back! Mammootty, as always did a wonderful job. Salim Kumar was awesome and the BGM seemed nice. Overall impressive story, but it lacks a touch of classy direction and dialogues. The old school direction may be the reasom.

Direction was poor, supporting actors performance was not up to mark, dialogues were unnatural and editing was not good. Cuts and transitions felt disconnected at many places.

An one time watchable average movie.. If you have watched all cbi series, this would be definitely disappoint you.. Script and story telling is too weak that it feels like lagging just after few minutes of movie. Climax is somewhat expected but still okay...

A good, once to watch, suspense thriller, keeping in line with all the CBI movies released till now, but casting falling short of the past movies.

The movies falls short on the fact that Mamooty's character was not really needed to solve the mystery as in the past, or the mystery got unfolded by itself was a bit of a letdown.

The introduction of the protagonist in the fist half is so deliberate that the writer tried his max, but couldn't in anyway inculcate the character to show up in a way of investigation but on it own.

The similar clichés of CBI officials and interrogated people still continues and could have been done away with.

The inculcation of scenes that bare no requirement to the movie adds to the lag, both in first and second half of the movie. These scenes and characters have no meaning to the movie or plays any importance in the storyline.

But all in all, the writer and director has combined again well to bring out a good movie.

CBI 5: The Brain is actually CBI: The Greatest Hits. All ideas, including the climax twist, have been rehashed from the previous films. SN Swamy tries to contemporize one of the kills, but once certain things become evident in the more briskly paced second half, I realized that he was only harking back to another script of his (from the '90s) starring Mammootty himself. The film is exposition-heavy, and those vague close-up shots, which may have worked 15-20 years ago, fail to work here. The setting, the playout of events, and the not-so-novel idea of the killer having accomplices are all picked up from the earlier entries and Swamy's other works. But the most disappointing factor here is the motive for the killings - not only is it the weakest element but it also struggles to firmly bind everything together. Even when there were loopholes and questionable climaxes in the earlier ventures, at least the murderer's motive was one that made sense.

P. S - It was a pleasure seeing Jagathy Sreekumar (as Vikram) for that wonderfully effective but short scene. Even Mukesh (as Chacko) showing up for just a couple of scenes felt nice.