Loham

The intention is to showcase the inner world of the gold smuggling to the audience, but with a story structure that is too simple and highly predictable (except for the interval punch) Loham fails to be an entertainer. It neither gives anything special about the new plot nor explores the commercial flavours which we expect in a Ranjith movie that has this mass appeal attire. The lack of a fresh track to say something related to smuggling makes Loham, a movie without any energy.

As I said it is a movie that deals with the smuggling of gold, which was quite a news a few months ago and I believe we still here news related to that. Loham deals with one such operation where a group of people are conducting this secret operation to smuggle gold with the help of some people in the authorities for many political and non political purposes. But some other gang get into this business which causes severe disturbance to the whole plan. How it causes problems for them and how this chase for gold ends is what Ranjith’s Loham talking about.

Teaser was interesting and trailer was disappointing and the movie in my opinion falls in the disappointment category. There was this “keep the expectations low” tag spreading before the release. Once you watch the movie you will realize why they said that. The movie has this cold feel throughout. There isn’t a single dialogue you will remember after the movie. The sort of simplistic Mohanlal kept things moving in the first half, but the second half of the movie was predictable and dull. A suspense pattern that was used by movies like Sapthamasree Thaskaraha: and Seventh Day was used here as well. Too many characters were given to popular new faces without any relevance. Aju and Soubin at least had two lines to speak. I have no clue what Srinda and Manikkuttan was doing.

Well the movie doesn’t give that much space to Mohanlal to explore his mass avatar. Even after shaving the beard, Raju isn’t changing that drastically to give us the sort of fun we expect in this kind of a movie. Among the rest of the cast, the most entertaining one was actor Siddique whose sequences with that betting obsessed relative gave some witty moments to the audience. Suresh Krishna, Ajmal Ameer, Andrea Jeremiah, Vijayaraghavan, Muthumani, KPAC Lalitha, Santhosh Keezhattur, Ashvin, Abu Salim, Renji Panicker, Aju Varghese, Soubin Shahir, Mythili, Musthafa and many more are there in the elaborate star cast who doesn’t have much to do on screen (5-10 minutes roles for most of them).

Coming to the making, the movie lacks a pulsating treatment. It doesn’t go the usual mass way and the only appealing moment was the interval punch. After that the movie does the routine thing of finding the villain and the climax that kind of tries to create this Robin Hood style hero is something that has been tested out. The script from Ranjith explores the world of smuggling and its tactics nicely. But when it comes to giving it a cinematic format, he follows the usual predictable formula. Music was average and the background score mixing was itchy. Edits and cinematography are just okay.

Overall Loham was a disappointment for me. The most generous verdict from my part would be that it is an average movie. But I don’t think it’s a movie that deserves that sort of generosity, so the rating is 2/5. It will be comfortable onetime watch for those who say “watching Mohanlal is enough for me.”