I Am Kathalan

In an era where Malayalam cinema has been consistently pushing boundaries, "I am Kathalan" emerges as a refreshing addition to the genre of techno-thrillers. This film, directed by the talented Girish A. D., offers a unique blend of suspense, romance, and a deep dive into the world of cybercrime. Naslen, the lead actor, delivers a stellar performance as Vishnu, an ordinary young man who finds himself embroiled in an extraordinary situation. Vishnu, a tech-savvy individual with a heart of gold, is portrayed with such authenticity that it's easy to empathize with his struggles and triumphs. His journey from an underachieving college student to a skilled hacker is both inspiring and thrilling.

The film entitled I Am Kathalan, can be classified as a cinematic work belonging to the technical thriller drama genres. The film was directed by Girish A. D.

The film's narrative is focused on the character of Vishnu, who is depicted as an engineering student. He possesses a high level of proficiency in the field of hacking and associated areas of IT. However, he has accumulated a significant amount of arrears in his college studies. Following the completion of their respective academic qualifications, his classmates secured employment. He is still struggling to complete the degree. He is romantically involved with Shilpa, who successfully completed the course and was recruited to her father's financial company as the head of the IT department. Consequently, the relationship deteriorated, ultimately leading to its dissolution. Following the incident with Shilpa's father, he sustained a blow. Vishnu harbours a desire for retribution against Shilpa's father. He opts for a course of action that centres on technical aspects as a means of achieving retribution. Vishnu obtained the MAC address of Shilpa's father's company's cloud infrastructure and subsequently compromised the entire system. This constitutes a substantial financial setback for the Periyadan Group, the company owned by Shilpa's father. Following the implementation of enhanced security measures, Vishnu successfully infiltrated the entire system once more. The company enlisted the services of an ethical hacker to identify the individual responsible for the hacking incident. The ethical hacker collected Vishnu's profile name. However, the system was subsequently breached on a further occasion, resulting in the entire server room being destroyed by overheating due to the devices being overloaded. In order to conceal his own address, Vishnu utilised the MAC address of Shilpa's fiancée. The scenes of the climax are of great interest.

The narrative was skilfully crafted and helmed, with a visually appealing quality to the delivery. The film has been meticulously compiled, incorporating all pertinent short references and technical terms with remarkable clarity. The performances are of a commendable standard, and the musical scores are effective in their use. The film is considered to be suitable for both watching and recommendation.

When talking about authentic hacking in films, something like Mr. Robot or Blackhat might come up but even those are of a big scale with so much at stake where just the methodologies or tools are authentic and then it goes into the realm of cinematic liberties for the time and impact of it. But here, from the scale to the impact everything stays grounded along with stuff that has to do physically for the hacking to happen. Even though I haven't done things like that, I have used Kali Linux and done some mock workshops to identify almost everything that Vishnu does in this film, so that was really refreshing to watch.

Even though not as good as Girish AD's previous films, this also works greatly due to the small moments that add a lot to the film's soul. The main problem with this film is that it never really becomes a full-on thriller even when the story demands it to be. It's mostly a coming-of-age drama with some revenge angle that centers around hacking. Since this was shot before Premalu, some things that were more refined or effectively used in that film are not as good here. The subtle development and impact of minor characters with respect to the main characters without affecting the main story was done almost perfectly in Premalu but here, it needed a bit more work. The ending was a bit too early for the story since there were definitely possibilities left which usually would have had space for a climatic act. There were a few things that could've been done that would've made this more impactful overall.

But despite all that, this still has the relatability factor I found in Premalu, even if it is in smaller doses. There were a lot of places where I found myself relating hard with Vishnu, which also made me think about how different Girish's characters are from me, and yet they are still some of the most relatable characters I've seen in movies. He really showed me how much of the relatable heroes of the past were more like the perceived and normalized version of such characters in Malayalam cinema rather than actually feeling it.

I am Kathalan

A small fun to watch entertainer set on the backdrop of a potential hacking threat to a corporate entity.

The plot of the story revolves around a young hapless guy who sets out to take a small revenge over a personal ego hurt he underwent.

Good story narration by Girish through Sajin's debut writing and has provided the casts with platform for performing through their vivid mannerisms and light humour moments.

Naslen has effortlessly performed the character role portraying the frustration and emotions of a failed job aspirant. Impressive performances by Dileesh Pothen,Lijomol,Anishma & Vineeth Vasudevan. Vineeth Vishwam,ZhinzShan,Kiran Josey & Arshad Ali made notable performances.

Kudos to Akash Joseph Varghese for giving a crisp and short fun to watch entertainer.

A decent attempt by Girish & team that gives a laid back experience to the viewers.

Rating - 3.25/5.

Have watched this movie on my trip to india, It is available in prime video in india but not in UAE. But anyways, solid film. It should have a better ending though... anyone who likes tech and those stuff will definitely like this film but whereas none techies.... NO, but maybe, guess we'll never know...

EXTRA: No need to read below

I don't know why but it says that this review is too, short but I countainted as much info possible, the thing is, I don't like to leave long reviews so this is just an extra, do not care about this ting, like literally, why 600, 300 is more than enough so I'm just typing this thing lol.