KHALIFA  Review - An exhausting commercial cinema with zero substance!

Ashwin Ram

Premise:Prithviraj’s father gets arrested all of a sudden, only when he comes to know that his grandfather is one of the biggest gold smugglers in the world. What happens after he enters the field out of compulsion, to save his family situation forms the remaining story.

Writing/ Direction: Almost the entire narrative is through a flashback, shown from the scratch to showcase the hero’s graph, but those portions literally had nothing to do with the story. The family backdrop did come as a trope later on, used as a tool to create an impact, but the results in failure. The core revolves around a smuggling syndicate, but there is no detailing. There are a couple of nice ideas on how the hero smartly sneaks things from the customs department, but they just settle as small moments and not developed as major scenes. A few minutes into the film, it felt the entire presentation was in slow-motion, every scene carrying plenty of those shots which astronomically reduce the pacing of the flow. Not even a single interesting scene in the entire movie, all are supposed to be intelligent conmen who fight over to be in the top position, but they just do hand combat with each other without using their brains. The revenge aspect is so outdated, there is no drama or purpose for the action, especially the second half is filled with fight sequences but so bluntly staged. The tonality feels so fake, the intent is a stylist actioner, but nothing to root for and it doesn’t give the Malayalam flavour at all. Just to fool the fans and send-off with some excitement, the final five minutes is loaded with back to back cameos, wholly unnecessary and ineffective, also there is a lead to the second part, escalating the already empty flick to the next level.

Performances: Prithviraj looked so young and handsome, also suited perfectly for the stylish character. Dummy heroine who came like a passing cloud. Such a weak villain role for Neil Nitin Mukesh, his dubbing voice didn’t fit his stature at all. Many famous supporting actors are present like Indrans, etc, sadly none of them had any prominence in the subject. Three big stars have taken part at the very end for special appearances, out of which two had absolutely no purpose, the major cameo also did not click as we are already out of energy.

Technicalities: Jakes Bejoy’s soundtrack is not noisy and genuinely tries to enhance the flow, also the presentation is very much in his forte. Cameraman has maintained a neat colour tone throughout and the visuals are good too, but there are infinite patient testing slow-motion shots. The film demanded a slick editing, that is totally missing here, generic pattern and the racy factor a commercial film requires is non-existent.

Verdict: The basic need for a heist or smuggling subject is that there has to be at least bare minimal smartness, but it seems like the director never considered the writing part, rather just focused on making a stylish-looking film. Hence the crashing-bore output.

KHALIFA - An exhausting commercial cinema with zero substance!

Rating - 1.5/ 5.