Odiyan should be an MBA subject and VA Shrikumar Menon should give the people in places like IIM a class on how to make buzz around something that doesn’t have anything appreciable to its credit. With a clichéd plot getting stretched out with so much predictable and outdated elements, Odiyan for its runtime is tedious. And with the kind of darkness mess it created, I felt like coming out from a cave after watching this film.
Odiyan Manikyan is our main protagonist. He is right now in Varanasi after leaving his home townThenkurishi 15 years ago. His love interest Prabha is still there in Thenkurishiand the movie Odiyan shows us the reason why Odiyan had to leave his hometown and how he eventually comes clean.
This is basically a revenge storyabout a man who gets misunderstood as a murderer. And what is so disappointing isthat this kind of themes were used in mainstream movies that were made 20 years back and Shrikumar Menon gives us a time travel experience. I don’t know about other theatres, there was one scene in the second half were Manikyan and Prabhatalk about the 15 years gap and at the end of that severely melodramatic conversation Prabha asks Manikyan “Kurachu Kanji Edukkatte Manikya?”.The audience who were looking at the dull moments till that point laughed really hard for that seemingly serious dialogue and that scenario pretty much shows you the state of the film. The script is way too thin and straightforward. Every character is the old school drama character and some of them are highly annoying caricatures.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BrXSkbwhD5R/
There is a scene were Mohanlal’sOdiyan Manikyan pleads not guilty in front of Prabha and her sister. In myopinion that was the only moment in the movie where something was actually required from his part. Other than that, not even screenpresence factor was utilized properly. Manju Warrier has a fair enough role as Prabha and even though her dialogue delivery is uneven and artificial at many places, I wasn’t that dissatisfied with the performance. Prakash Raj is wasted as an eccentric villain. And why are we seeing this racist representation of villains who are getting called as black ones? Sana Althaf was just okay. Narein was a huge letdown. Nandu, Kailash, Siddique, Innocent etc are there in characters that are not so memorable. A special mention to Antony Perumbavoor who was probably the only comic relief of the movie.
V A Shrikumar Menon’s making is extremely wayward. Harikrishnan’s script that very rarely explores the concept of Odiyangets no enhancements in the making side. What they have shown as OdiVidhya in the movie at times felt like mere “iruttadi”. Shrikumar Menon andHarikrishnan seems to have no clue about how updated the audiences are as they try to pitch certain suspense elements in the movie which anyone can guess half an hour into the film. The melodramatic dialogues and scenes just go on and on. The unfolding of the Prabha Manikyan love story which happens in the latter part of the second was excruciatingly long. Peter Hein’s fight sequences are one of the hypes of this movie and interestingly Shaji Kumar has made it so black in DI that you won’t even understand who is hitting who. The edits have ruined the stunts and also the flow of the back and forth narrative. Music was really good on an album level, but the songs never really made an impact. The background score in its repetitive tone was unimpressive after a point. Muchboasted Visual Effects was also a letdown and you can sense that in the very beginning itself.
Odiyan is a movie that tricked the audience into believing that it is something about the mysteries of a man being an Odiyan. But sadly this nearly 3-hour long movie is pretty much a lackluster outdated attempt on creating a so-called mass entertainer. Looking at the movies Mohanlal has done after the physical transformation, I would say Nivin Pauly and Rosshan Andrewss should thank V A Shrikumar Menon for convincing Mohanlaltoundergo the physical transformation as it really saved their KayamkulamKochunni through that tough and fit Ithikkara Pakki.
