Mikhael

With Mikhael, writer director Haneef Adeni sort of tells us that his ingredients to make a thriller won’t change. Just like The Great Father and Abrahaminte Santhathikal, you will have the claps worthy over the top moments for sure. But the writing becomes very predictable or overly stylized at many areas. For Mikhael there is this additional burden of the audience knowing Haneef Adeni and his props and the movie just wasn’t able to surprise me in that perspective.

A junior doctor named Michael is our central protagonist. His father passed away in his childhood and he wasn’t comfortable with his mother’s second marriage. He has a sister and she means the world to him. The movie shows us how Michael responds when his family faces a trouble and how he eventually protects them. 

The signature style in Haneef Adeni’s scripting is evident in this movie. Now is that a good thing or bad is up to your perception of his previous movies. I wasn’t a big fan of his movies and found them as passable ones. When it comes to Mikhael, I found it slightly more underwhelming when compared to the other two. The layers he has added to the story have no real blend. The episode like ending of Villains and the never ending showdowns in the second half makes it even more tiring. Adeni is trying to give Michael a man with a different secret face kind of persona and sadly that idea just wasn’t working in the expected charismatic way. 

Nivin Pauly seriously needs to work on his physique. Editor Mahesh Narayanan has done more fighting here to make him look like a macho hero. The actor is in his comfort zone when he is simple and vulnerable. When he starts to put heft on emotions he becomes a misfit (one thing someone like Mammootty did so easily). Actor Siddique in his antagonist avatar was effective in being creepy. Unni Mukundan honestly doesn’t look like a menacing character. Looking at his physique I would have preferred to see him as the hero as Mike wasn’t an acting challenge. Actor JD Chakravarthy is the must have police officer in a Haneef Adeni movie here and his usual style fits the character and Adeni’s attempt to make him a hero towards the tail end was a bit odd. Suraj Venjaramood has got some space. The girl who portrayed the role of Mike’s sister Jenny was nice. Manjima Mohan has hardly any role here. Shanthi Krishna, Sudev Nair, Jayaprakash, KPAC Laliltha, Babu Antony, Kalabhavan Shajon etc are the other familiar faces here. 

If anyone is feeling annoyed with me for comparing Mikhael to The Great Father and Abrahaminte Santhathikal, it is because the tone and storytelling have so much of similarity. There is a hero who has the job of protecting a dear one (after daughter and brother, this time it is sister), there will be a parallel police investigation, hero’s flashback heroics will be a factor and so many other minute elements are there which makes it another story in the Haneef Adeni slow motion psycho killer extended universe. He has written a lot of punch dialogue like stuff, especially in the second half and ironically those were the portions that I felt were sticking out from the narrative. Luckily he hasn’t forgotten to use the doctor profession of the hero in the script and the way the usage of it covers the flaws of the usualness of the story in the end, might make you feel better about the movie. The cinematography style isn’t particularly unique, but effectively portrays the idea Adeni wants to plug. Like I already said, Mahesh Narayanan has tried to make the narrative look better on screen but the evident lack of grace wasn’t helping him. Fights looked dull. The teaser theme music gets used here and the “Olakka Chaka Chaka” sounded hilarious and fitting to the situation. 

If Nivin Pauly was slightly more graceful, I would have said Mikhael is as good as The Great Father. But here he was just unable to lift a usual revenge thriller to the next level. Some of the moments might make you clap for it, but the movie in totality was on the duller side. 

Rating: 2/5

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By Aswin Bharadwaj

Founder and editor of Lensmen Reviews.

View all of Aswin Bharadwaj's posts.