Neelakasham Pachakkadal Chuvanna Bhoomi - Random opinion...

..that doesn't matter in the big scheme of things.

It had been a while that I had gone for a malayalam movie. Mostly because of the difficulties in moving one's own lazy ass to take the effort. Plus I am feeling awesomely bleh most of these days for most part of the day. Perfect state of mind.

Ok, so first things first. The name - Just so lyrical.
Bullets - Two gorgeous ones at that. Do I need to say more.
Posters - kickass.

There are some, no, many stunning visuals through out the movie, and so credits to Mr. Gireesh Gangadharan. But I also think that it isn't so totally unexpected, firstly because Sameer Thahir himself was an accomplished camera guy before he moved into direction and so he might have made sure of them, and then because it would have been criminal of the cinematographer if the visuals were any less beautiful, even after getting such an exciting canvas as a road movie in your hands that throws in a lot of possibilities.

Rex seemed the natural choice for composing the score for such a movie. I cannot think of anyone who would have done justice to that, among the current crop of Malayalam composers that is. And you know how thankful I am that Rex did a solo job and that they didn't think of roping in the Avial band as such for the music or anything? I mean, the tunes would have sounded awesome all the same, but all the songs would have suffered with Tony singing all of them.

I have an issue with the plot. It takes too many unnecessary detours and is too unconvincing. There are just too many loose ends. To start with, the firebrand left-wing idealistic leader for a college guy is a cliche. And in the plot, the sidekick character who seem to have no life of his own but to assist the hero, the curious murder of the Syam guy, that absurd incident with the lorry stalking Suni's bike and almost killing him, the militants wanting to kill Assi on the night Qasi reaches her home (seriously, they waited all that time to finish her off and couldnt have killed her already the moment she arrived?), this can go on. The whole romance side track which is the main reason for the skewed storyline, comes off as a forced attempt to make a reasoning for them riding that far. I mean, its like if the scriptwriter thought that the only objective that would justify that sort of an adventure would be the hero's intent to unite with his estranged love. No seriously, I felt it would have been much more enjoyable if they had done away with that completely, and instead focused on the great affair of the ride itself - the places, the ride, the hurdles, the people they meet, the lessons learnt.. but yes I have to admit this is like treading on the Motorcycle Diaries territories and that the movie would have become more of a documentary but at least it would have been honest.

With the above paragraph,  my intention was definitely not to pan the movie in its entirety or anything. I am the average minimally demanding viewer who overlooks a lot of incoherence and loopholes in the plot if the movie kind of hooks you to it. Like Ustad Hotel for example.  Its just that I believe this was a very interesting premise and offered many possibilities, for a movie. As far as my limited knowledge goes this is the first road movie made in Malayalam, and they had the opportunity to make a memorable film to start the genre with. On those fronts it disappointed me quite a bit.

All that being said, it gives a good hard poke to the wanderlust in you. Movie wins.