Murali Gopy and Prithviraj had mentioned multiple times in interviews how they look at the mass masala format of a movie as a sugar coating given to essential medicine. Back in 2019, when I saw Lucifer, because of the kind of complex narratives Murali Gopy had written till that point, Lucifer felt like a very simplistic, over-the-top film. Maybe because of the anticipation I had about that film, I kind of overlooked the political layer and the climax bit that sort of made everything way too convenient for Stephen Nedumpally slightly reduced the overall high I hoped from that film. But when I saw the movie again, the complex and nuanced political layers grabbed my attention, and it sort of built a genuine curiosity about how the world of Empuraan would look like.
So, 5 years after the events we saw in Lucifer, Stephen Nedumpally has left Kerala, taking a sabbatical from politics, and nobody knows where he is. Like how anyone can decipher from the trailer, the tenure of Jathin Ramdas is not going the way one would have anticipated as corruption levels increased. We see the return of Stephen Nedumpally to the political hemisphere when things start to go down south.
Murali Gopy is someone who has a clear idea about any kind of political belief system and its flaws. In a way, Lucifer was an escapist political thriller, where the character of Stephen Nedumpally was more of an outside force that controlled the equilibrium. In Lucifer, if you look at the proportion of the story, the political layer was the most evident one, and it had a close connection with the personal stories of each character. When it comes to Empuraan, there are basically two agendas. One is the introduction of the right wing, which was absent in the first chapter, and the next one shows the enormity of Khureshi Ab’raam. Even though Murali Gopy is clubbing these two by adding backstories, the overall result is a bit stretched.
Prithviraj Sukumaran gives this political drama a thick layer of heroics, and in order to make it a crowd-pleaser, he sort of recreates a lot of the iconic moments and lines from Lucifer in a new and grander way. We get a 2.0 version of the most celebrated moments of Part 1 in this movie. While some of it really created that mass euphoria, a few of them kind of fell flat. The story, this time, has Prithviraj’s character, Zayed Masood, in a bit more emotional space, and it offers the movie a chance to design the climax as a role swap of what happens in Lucifer. I think in Empuraan, Prithviraj has opted for a lot more metaphorical shots and silhouettes, with multiple instances of the visuals having an L in the frame.
If you look at the Kerala politics we see in Empuraan, the landscape has now become broader, the drama in the story is really interesting, and you will be compelled to know how the political track will evolve. But the issue is that the KA (Khureshi Ab’raam) chapter is a bit heftier, and it has a disconnection with what is happening in Kerala. So, this disconnect sort of impacts the graph of the film. Yes, the antagonist here is playing a crucial role in both tracks. But just like how you feel the fate of Bobby in Lucifer was written in a hasty way, the showdown at the end of this movie also feels pretty convenient.
Action blocks and the stylized introductions of Stephen were one of the main highlights of Lucifer. When it comes to Empuraan, they have managed to pull off bigger set pieces with greater visual quality, and very rarely, it became these physics-defying heroic things. The production quality of this movie is top-notch, and there is no doubt in the fact that the movie has definitely pushed the boundaries of what Malayalam cinema can pull off. Cinematography is in that stylized zone mostly as the story, this time, is less about the emotional turmoils of characters. Unlike Lucifer, there is no major edit shuffling happening in this movie, and I thought the cuts in certain action sequences, especially the climax fight and Stephen’s re-entry to Kerala, had too many cuts, which slightly reduced the swagger. Deepak Dev once again did a great job by backing the visuals with his score that had grandeur.
Prithviraj had talked about Mohanlal’s observation about Stephen as a man with a lot of grief inside him. The story, this time, is set in such a space that we are not able to feel that numbness in Stephen. As a larger part of the performance was focused on the larger-than-life stature of Stephen, Mohanlal is mostly seen flexing his shoulders to enhance the swagger factor. Tovino Thomas gets to play a bit more grey-shaded version of Jathin Ramdas, and he did a fairly good job. Manju Warrier portrayed the hesitations of Priyadarshini Ramdas neatly on screen, and the movie has been set up in a way that we might see a more confident version of her character in L3. Game of Thrones actor Jerome Flynn gets a fairly extensive and important role in the film. Indrajith Sukumaran, Fazil, Baiju Santhosh, etc., reprised their role from the original while Suraj Venjaramood, as Sajanachandran, made his entry into this universe. Abhimanyu Singh, as the main antagonist, was pretty effective, and the lines written for that character were also pretty good. Much like Lucifer, Prithviraj has relatively less screen time as it is his younger version, played by Karthikeya Dev, who is doing the emotional heavy lifting.
Much like Lucifer, the basic layer that drives the plot forward is the power games happening in Kerala politics. While Lucifer had a larger share of those mind games, Empuraan is low on that aspect because it has the added responsibility of showing the backstory of integral characters of this universe. Similar to how Lucifer ends, Empuraan also teases you with promises of a bigger part 3, and I hope I will be able to find more layers when I rewatch this film in the future.
While Lucifer had a larger share of the political mind games, Empuraan is low on that aspect because it has the added responsibility of showing the backstory of integral characters of this universe.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
