The director of the latest Malayalam film, Ankam Attahasam, Sujith S Nair, had said that this movie is the result of 15 years of his penance. Well, when you watch this movie, you can clearly know that he was in a penance for the last 15 years because the kind of stuff we see in this film was last seen on the big screen almost 15 years ago. The CBFC has awarded this movie an A certificate. Even though it is technically due to the violence that happens in the second half, I won’t be amused if it was their attempt to reduce the audience casualty. Co-produced by Madhav Suresh himself, Ankam Attahasam offers you a unique experience where, after the mass interval block when the lights were turned on, the audience was unanimously laughing at their own movie preferences.
Ajay, a young boy from Thiruvananthapuram, was in love with a girl named Alan. But her father was against that relationship, and he tried to even kill Ajay using a gangster named Kakka Saiju. The repercussions of that attack eventually resulted in certain tragedies, and it eventually made Ajay a gangster. What we see in the movie is the growth of Ajay as this ruthless don.
The trailer of the movie was released back in August 2025, and it was the time “Njangal Andharanu Gundakal Alla” dialogue was trending. And the trailer had zero dialogue from Madhav Suresh. Well, the reason we all guessed was 100% correct. Even in the last eight months, they were not able to fix the dialogue rendering through dubbing. Looking at the fossil nature of the script, one can easily understand why they may have decided not to waste time on redubbing this debacle, tailor-made for roast channels. The script wants it to be a typical gangster film where we see a boy from a normal family who gets into the world of crime without any intentions and then becomes a crime lord kind of thing. The idea is like a blend of Kireedam and Rajavinte Makan. However, the issue is, Sujith S Nair, who has previously made several serials, is mounting everything in the same quality we see in cheap Indian serials, and the serious drama and mass moments will make you laugh out loud.
This is a movie where Madhav Suresh, with his current acting potential, is depicted as the crime world king of Trivandrum city. I mean, how offensive is that to the underworld of that city? Imagine resisting your laughter, seeing a scene where a high-level meeting of police officers happens, and they are all in a way raving about how Ajay (Madhav Suresh) has become the most dreaded criminal. And in between, we have to watch Madhav doing some things that he believes are adding swagger to the character. The case that made Ajay go to jail will make you question the way investigations work in this parallel universe movie. The action choreography is flawed with excessive slow motion, exposing the fakeness of it. There is even a 144p version of the “Vaada” fight from Lucifer. The songs have the quality of a mediocre, outdated album. I feel ChatGPT can write better dialogues if you ask it to reduce the clichés.
It seems like Madhav Suresh is looking at movies as some sort of space to create reels. The director has considerably reduced his dialogue portions, and seniors like Shine Tom Chacko and Saiju Kurup are the ones trying to save this unsavable film. Whenever Madhav tries to say a dialogue, he is trying to add this unwanted heft to it, and it makes it unintentionally funny. After several scenes where he is just walking and staring, he finally gets a dialogue in the second half when two police officers interrogate him. And those lines he says about him being a messenger of God to deliver justice made the 7 people in the theater, where I saw the movie, laugh out loud. There were instances where the editor chose to show other people’s reactions when Madhav was saying dialogue to save his performance.
The introduction scene of Shine Tom Chacko has him impulsively killing a guy, and the way he was holding the gun, one would wonder whether he was pushing the bullet out of the gun. The version of Shine Tom Chacko, who won’t be able to say a tongue twister, is appearing in this film, and hence you will need subtitles to understand certain parts of the dialogue. When Shine Tom ran out of dates, Saiju Kurup entered the plot purely for EMI reasons, and he was also insulting the gun that was in his hands. MA Nishad plays the part of the heroine’s father. Maqbool Salman also played a role in this movie as a rival goonda. Saiju Kurup, Maqbool Salman, and Madhav Suresh, if they could have managed to squeeze in one or two scenes featuring Dhyan Sreenivasan, this could have been the Expendables of the Malayalam Parallel Cinematic Universe. In between her busy inauguration schedule, Anna Rajan has managed to do a role that has become extinct a couple of decades ago.
The only positive I have managed to find from this movie is the fact that Saiju Kurup may have acted in this movie before Mohiniyattam, and the remuneration he got may have been invested in the making of that dark comedy film. And that is perhaps the only reason with which Saiju Kurup can justify his decision to go back to his Koottukar dark days. For the makers, this might be a violent action film about a middle-class boy, but if you go in with a few of your friends to watch this film, it will be like watching a top-notch comedy entertainer. Instead of trying for OTT platforms, I would highly recommend the producers to get into a revenue-sharing agreement with top roast channels at the earliest.
