LOHAM MOVIE REVIEW

 

************************ No Spoilers in this Review ************************

 

As you walk into the theatre, one thing is clearly tangible - the high expectations on Loham. When one of the biggest Superstars of Malayalam film industry, Mohanlal, joins hand with one of the most respected contemporary Malayalam film-makers, Ranjith, what else can be the case. 

 

Loham starts well with individuals, willingly or unwillingly involved in the big dangerous game of gold smuggling trying to find out about a customs officer. The writer in Ranjith successfully keeps the curiosity live until the mid point of the movie. The second half slowly unravels all the kingpins and the pawns of this power game involving money and politics.

 

As always, this Ranjith movie is also loaded with some of the best actors. But the disappointment is that they are not used well enough by the script. None of them seem to be given the adequate character sketch or the screen time to prove their worth. Not even the biggest of them all - Lalettan. Perhaps the cat and mouse game involves too many players.

 

This simple reason does impact the overall experience and leaves the movie watcher not take home anything memorable as far as performance is concerned. And in this sense, Loham is so anti-Ranjith movie where you usually will always have some great individual acting performances to cherish. 

 

Mohanlal would do such roles half asleep. Nothing much to challenge him here. Siddique shines with his comic liners. Soubin Shahir, the endearing physical trainer of Premam gets a couple of minutes in Loham too and he makes sure he gets noticed. It is just a matter of time before this actor gets a real break. 

 

Technically there isn’t much to complain - be it the cinematography, editing, music or the production design. Though one would wonder if couple of songs could have been done away with. 

 

So to conclude, if you go keeping your expectations under check, in spite of the big names involved in the movie, Loham is a one-time watch drama.