Lailaa O Lailaa

From the first five minutes of the movie Lailaa O Lailaa, you will surely identify the fact that the writer of the movie has something to do with the recent Bollywood blockbuster Bang Bang. Suresh Nair’s latest script directed by veteran Joshiy is a movie that definitely demands a much grander presentation as its story line is too silly and charmless. Except for the method using which the hero escapes when the villains scream” put your gun down”, there is nothing really attractive about this movie at any point of time.

Jai Mohan and Anjali Menon are the central protagonists here. Jai Mohan is an undercover agent and Anjali is quite a normal girl from a rich family and they are married. The movie basically focuses on one crucial mission of Jai Mohan to hunt down a bunch of terrorists who were planning a big attack. How he handles the situation with marriage and other problems coming in between is what Lailaa O Lailaa narrating in it’s almost 3 hour long narration.

Except for the basic cat and mouse game between NIA and terrorists, there are no layers in this action film. The idea is quite simple which has been tested successfully long time back.  Somewhere I read that it was originally written to make it as a Hindi movie, and may be because of the fact that it is really close to something like Bang Bang, they dropped that idea. While watching the movie you will surely have the feeling that the movie needed the support of a better director and a little more extravagant setup. In visualizing this gizmo gadget investigation stuff, Joshiy doesn’t seem to have gone much from what we saw in Salaam Kashmir. Writer seems to have underestimated the terrorists to make things easy for the hero. And you really wish to see some quality set pieces other than drifting BMW in a movie like this and that was really missing here.

As I said, Joshiy’s method of keeping the excitement on screen is a bit outdated and only the first two rows where finding it worth applauding (for obvious reasons) in a full house. The story is wafer thin and the scripting is very much on the predictable and unexciting side. The dialogues aren’t that catchy and even the wannabe cool dialogues also had this artificial feel. Cinematography is disappointing with too much of unsteady and compact shots. Edits too wasn’t that exciting with awkward slow motions here and there. Art direction also looked quite underwhelming. Among the tracks, the two slower ones are hummable but the rest weren’t interesting at all. Gopi Sunder fails miserably on getting the background score right; it was too loud and less catchy. Visual effects were used very much in those climax portions and it isn’t that great either.

The character is never a tough one for the calibre of an actor like Mohanlal and I don’t think it has utilized him completely even in that larger than life way. Amala Paul did her part nicely without much annoyance in a self dubbed portrayal. Sathyaraj was okay as the chief. Rahul Dev gets promotion from sharp shooter to terrorist head. Joy Mathew, Remya Nambeesan, Junaid Shiekh, Sudhir Kumar and many more are there in small roles.

Overall Lailaa O Lailaa hasn’t met with the expectations I had as it had the co-writer of films like Kahaani and Namastey London as the script writer. The rating for the movie is 2/5. Even the diehard fans of the super star will find it just about okay.