Christian Brothers is the most awesomest movie we have ever seen this year. The primary goal of the script writers was not to tax the brain of Malayali viewer and provide VFM (Value for Money). It is filmed in exactly the same house as Twenty-Twenty, with most people of that movie playing exactly the same role. Usually in such movies, the villain is not revealed in the beginning. But here it is revealed in the beginning itself. This helps the brain. It also helps if you have Alzheimer’s.

Various factors add to the coolness of the movie. It has people who wear cooling glass inside the house. Then it uses sophisticated “computer” technology and prints “Tracking Signal” on top of Google Maps when Mohanlal’s henchmen try to track phone calls. It has a song with lyrics “moham kondal innu ethu pennum oru poochaye pole”. It has henchmen standing around the same swimming pool in which Prithviraj and Jayasurya swam in Robinhood discussing life-problems, like should we kill him ourselves or should we get pavanai? It has Babu Antony with a black towel tied around his head (hint: he is a commando).

The awesomeness comes in installments.  Mohanlal plays a Christie, an underworld connected Malayali from Mumbai who has come to help Kerala Police and the Home Minister. If this does not bring goose bumps, we don’t know what will. Also, as we all know anyone who ends up in Mumbai becomes an underworld don. It is called Newton’s fourth law. One day you are simply walking along Juhu Beach and boom, you become a Don. Then police is after you and every unshaven youth calls you “Bhai”. It happened to Mohanlal two decades in Abhimanyu. It happened once again now. You would think he would have learned by now.

The next peak comes with the arrival of Suresh Gopi as goonda. It kind of breaks the rhythm. You are so used to seeing him police uniform, you suddenly feel as if the world has started spinning in the opposite direction. Before we sink into despair, the gooda turns out to be an IPS officer – you know the Mussorie kind. He also has a name like Antony Punnokadan or Joseph Vadakkan or something of that sort. Once he arrives, he confronts Mohanlal and they throw dialogue at each other like those arrows from Ramayana serial. Awesomeness oozes so much that we need some buckets to collect it.

Christie saves the home minister’s daughter (Kavya Madhavan) from the always destined to fail henchmen-rape, but he ends up in jail due to a family mess up. You know son innocent, father does not believe it, some bad apples in family theme. By 90 minutes, the number of people who want to kill or eliminate Christie looks like a Malayali queue in front of the liquor store – Sharath Kumar, Biju Menon, Joseph Vadakkan, Sai Kumar.

Once someone is in jail, there is a Newton’s law which immediately applies.  As Newton wrote in Principia Mathematica, every jailed person shall be presented in court and every opposing force will try to prevent this from happening. This movies too has one such scene where all the alpha males get to show their alpha maleness. Imagine Sharath Kumar, Suresh Gopi, Mohanlal, Babu Antony all with guns. It is 20 minutes of pure testosterone. Then there is also the scene when the son is not invited to his sister’s marriage, but he shows up anyway fooling the entire police force. Finally, guess what, everything was based on a misunderstanding. These silly people.

Then Suresh Gopi gets to dump dialogue let and right. At men, women, ministers, and Salim Kumar. Only children are spared. But once his “Ammachi” calls, he becomes such a docile creature that if you pour some milk in a saucer he will stand on all fours and drunk it and wipe his lips with his tongue. He also blushes when his mom talks of marriage. Maybe it is because he is violating some marriage laws, but it is cho-chweet.

But we are not trashing the movie because it is a pure commercial film and we don’t get it. There is one classic scene where Mohanlal is holding Kavya Madhavan and Co as hostage. She wants to make a phone call to Dileep, but Mohanlal the hostage taker does not allow it. So she rants, saying he does not know what love is. This is a big mistake for if anyone knows what love is it has to be the Mumbai based underworld connected Malayali. Mohanlal switches to flashback and thinks of his love Laxmi Rai in saree drenched by the Kerala monsoon. At the end of this scene, he hands over the phone to Kavya Madhavan. So touching.

There is another scene where Mohanlal shows up with a gun during Kavya Madhavan’s engagement ceremony. The number of Malayali actors/sq ft is quite high in the scene and still he manages to get his way. The dialogue that got thrown around in that scene would have killed most people, but the alpha males survive for the climax scene. In the final climax, where everyone is beating up everyone else and furniture is being abused without mercy and bullets are flying around like mosquitoes in a typical evening, you really don’t care if Sharath Kumar is speaking Hebrew. All you want to know is only one thing. Will the three heroes shoot the villain together or will Christie alone shoot him with the two guns in either hand. We won’t tell you what happened. You should pay decent money and watch it yourself.

You may ask, other than classy lines like “Pakistanil kayari Bible vayikkaruthu” is there something worthwhile in this movie. It is a fun movie and it is fast paced. Before you start guessing which previous movie of Sibi K Thomas and Udaykrishna had this scene, the editor moves to the next scene. It repeats again. Then only a person of Joshiey’s calibre could have pulled this ensemble cast movie with sufficient dignity. Think how this movie would have been if Sandhya Mohan or Bhadran had directed this. Or think if Joshi had directed this instead of Joshiey. We also admire the talents of Mohanlal, Dileep and Suresh Gopi for who can make any scene look interesting. Yes, we have seen them do the same thing a zillion times, but still.

Direction: Joshiy / Joshee/ Josh-hee or some other funny spelling.  Other crew: I don’t know, and I frankly don’t care, because, they are not even worth mentioning.

Well, we have all seen this – a hundred times.  A father of high moral values – misunderstands his son – thinks son is gone rogue -  dad supports the villains -  kicks the son out of his house – later when the villains attack the father,  son returns – saves him – father says sorry and dies.

Just to refresh your memory – Sphadikam, Balettan, Chotta Mumbai – a few in which Gentleman Cadet Mohanlal himself starred.  So if you have seen any of those,  save yourselves from this one,  go buy a bottle for the cost of the ticket and enjoy your evening.

Josheeyi, Josh-hee, joshy josh hey Joshey after the hangover of 20-20 is stuck in the same soup formula,  mega movies,  huge stars(literally!),  larger than life roles and cheap slap stick comedy.

Here is the story,  or what is left of it:  Rtd. Captian Vargheese Mappila (Saikumar) marries off his daughter Jessy (lakshmi Gopalaswamy) to Krishna(Goergootty) who is actually a pimp in Mumbai. Christi(Mohanlal ) who is a decent god fearing, family loving son, as he always used to be in all movies,  goes to Mumbai and finds out the dealings of Georgeootty.  Georgeootty kills the goondas who were chasing them for no apparent reason, while he could have run away, hands over the gun the Christi and escapes. The police arrests poor innocent Christi(violins in the background, please).  Georgootty doesn’t stop there – he goes home, kills Jessy, his wife, again for no apparent reason. The clever villain then goes to Kerala, to Saikumar and tells him its Christi who did all this.

Tang da-dang !

Poor Christi out on bail, returns to his father to explain these things – Then the familiar thing happens -
Christi: “Dad, I have to tell you something”
Vargheese Mappila: “No, I dont want to hear anything! You have spoiled the family’s prestige ! you killed my daughter! Get out ! I dont want to see you again!”

Christi: “ But dad, its kind of important, you should hear this”
Vargheese Mappila: “No! I dont want to hear it! Get out!”

(well, if you remember seeing such scenes a 2983 times before, starting from Satyan-Sheela movies,  its your fault,  you don’t forget anything, do you?)

Christi, is disappointed as much he would be if he didn’t get ticket to a movie, walks out of the house,  promising never to return.

That bugger pimp Georgeootty, killed his sister, put him in jail, blamed him for everything, won the trust of dad, and is staying in the same house with your other sister -  and Christy cool, simbly walks out.

If you are still with me, there is more- Suraj Venjaranmoodu is irritating( if i had a cook like him, he wouldn’t last 2 days at my home – got to admire the patience of the Home Minister – enacted by Devan), Harisree Ashokan( his 24th time in the role of a broker) is damn irritating.  Guys, wake up!  The name of what you did on screen is called cheapness, not comedy. I had a better laugh when I watched clowns in cheap circus tents.

The intro scene of Mohanlal:  After the usual build up,  there is fire all over the screen – Mohanlal appears and floats horizontally and fires bullets at the audience, then he splits into 3 and joins back again.  What an amazing skill!  I hear that Mohanlal recently mastered this trick while training with the Indian army.

Then there are the main villains- Vijayaraghavan and co. They just drink scotch whiskey near the pool and randomly stab and kill people.

The average age of all the actors in the movie is 53 years, 9 months.

A fat and old Suresh Gopi, a faint shadow of his former movie image,  mouthing rhyming dialogues and marching here and there in uniform.

The fight scenes at regular intervals of 20 minutes are perfectly choreographed by Disco Shanti. No body gets hurt.(nothing spectacular here, go out for a smoke if you like. if you have seen one Mohanlal fight, you have seen it all)

Its a 3 hour 15 minutes of non stop torture. Wait for a few weeks and the theater projector operators will do some editing for you,  and hopefully make more sense then what is presently there. I am sure with some lavish use of scissors, we can recycle the rubbish and re-create a 10 minute crisp completely different movie, or maybe a couple of them.

Other than to show a bit of skin and also to show us, the stupid audience, that Christi is a man with emotions and is capable of loving and caring, there is Lakshmi Rai, and two completely unnecessary songs.

Dileep blabbers his usual stuff and roams around through screens, well,  I don’t know what else he did in the movie, other than being a reason to bring in Kavya Madhavan and an irritating song in foreign locations.

This is the kind of nonsense movie these old Jurassic age directors churn out. These are the kind of movies the stalwarts like Mohanlal and Suresh Body choose to act.

And these are the kind of movie that we, poor Malayalees, deserve to see – because it’s us, and no body else, gave the movie makers the feeling that we will gulp down any sh*t that is presented to us packed in colorful superstar wrappers and tied with the ribbon of over hype.

Enjoy your evening watching the news at home, it will be more entertaining than this movie.

Christian Brothers Rating: 2/10

Joshiy and his team have reworked their ‘Twenty-20’ template to make a half baked thriller called ‘Christian Brothers’. There are foreign location songs, superstar Mohanlal in a larger than life role, father-son sentiments, Dileep’s comic acts,  twists which come in every thirty minutes,  Suraj Venjaramooodu’s bufoonery, an interval punch similar to what we saw in Twenty Twenty, fight between the superstars(Mohanlal,Suresh Gopi), a little bit of skin show(in the form of Lakshmi Rai) and everything else needed for a commercial potboiler;  yet the movie fails to engage you completely. Christian Brothers will be lapped up by the fans of the Superstar for sure and in all probabilities will become a big hit. But for an average movie goer it is just an average fare.

Story and the Script: Scripting for a multistarrer is no child’s play. Uday Krishna and Sibi K Thomas have come up with a no brainer script this time too. ‘Christian Brothers’ is marginally better than their own ‘Pokkiri Brothers’ but is not as entertaining or racy as Twenty Twenty. The loop holes in the script are far too many.

Christy (Mohanlal) is an informer to the Mumbai Police. Meenakshi, the daughter(Kavya Madhavan) of the Kerala Home minister gets kidnapped and Christy is called for help(remember Sagar Alias Jacky).  Christy happens to be the brother of Jojiy(Dileep) who is madly in love with Meenakshy.  Some unexpected twists later, Meenakshi’s kidnapper George Kutty(Suresh Krishna) gets killed and Christy is the suspect.  Enter Joseph Vadakkan, the super cop played by…you guessed it right!  There are also a number of subplots involving Laksmi Rai,  Lakshmi Gopala Swamy,  Jagathy Sreekumar et al. Biju Menon, Vijaya Raghavan, Jayan play the baddies while Saikumar(!) plays Mohanlal’s father.  As in Pokkiri Raja there is a father-son sentiments track here too. Sarath Kumar as Andrews has a very small role and features in two important sequences.

The main problem with the movie lies in its script itself.It is a remixed version of ‘Twenty-20’ and ‘Pokkiri Raja’. The first half of the movie (in which issues like land grabbing have been delt with topically)is a bit confusing and also drags considerably.  The much hyped fight between Joseph aka Thomichan(Suresh Gopi) and Christy fails to make any impact. Those who have seen twenty twenty would easily predict the interval twist involving the Underworld don Andrews and Christy. The father character of V.Mapilla(Saikumar)is just a xerox copy of Nedumudi Venu’s character in Pokkiri Raja.

Direction:  Joshiy has done a decent job at handling all these big stars efficiently.  CB is the kind of movie which relies heavily on it’s star power rather than a credible story line to get itself worked at the box-office and the veteran director has made full use of his huge star cast here.

Cast and Performances:  CB is Mohanlal’s show all the way and his character, Christy will be a treat for his fans. Though the movie has nothing challenging for an actor of his caliber, it will give him the much needed hit. Suresh Gopi repeats his daredevil cop act for the nth time and honestly I didn’t like his character much. Dileep plays his usual comic acts with elan,  manages to raise a few laughs whenever he is on screen. Though Sarath Kumar has a very small role he looks aged and tired on screen.  The leading ladies have nothing much to do.  In big budget movies like this, the female characters are casted just for the eye candy bit. Even no such luck here.  All the heroines except Kaniha looked plumb and totally out of shape.  Suraj Venjaramoodu manages to irritate the audience with his stale jokes.

Editing:  Ranjan Abraham hasn’t resorted to fast cuts and other gimmicks for cheap thrills. But at almost 3 hours, Christian Brothers  is way too long.  Wonder why 1)Suraj Venjaramoodu 2)the ’sayyavve’ song picturised on Mohanlal and Laksmi Rai 3)the character played by Harisree Asokan 4)even Lakshmi Rai were included in the film.  A lot of scenes in the first half of the movie were really unwanted and the lag was overtly felt at places.

Cinematography: Anil Nair has done a shoddy work with his camera. The movie suffers due to excessive lighting. Lakshmi Rai hasn’t looked so bad on screen before! Extreme close up shots were also there in abundance. Every pore and crease on her face were clearly visible, thanks to the mediocre camera man.  Another instance in which Anil Nair’s camera plays the spoil sport is the London scene in which Dileep is talking to Kavya through phone.  The whole scene is lit up in such a way that even a ten year old can spot the thick layers of make up used on Dileep’s face.

Songs and BGM: Deepak Dev hasn’t disappointed much.The songs are hummable especially the Moham Kondal track. The picturisation of the other two tracks Karthave and Sayyave are lousy, to say the least.  While the Karthave song has a  Maine Pyar Kiya (CID Moosa)/ Kavilinayil(Vandanam) hang over to it,the  Sayyave track suffers due to the unnecessary skin show by Laksmi Rai. Both Lakshmi Rai and Kavya Madhavan doesn’t look good and are overweight. The re-recording reminded of Twenty -20.

Verdict:  Christian Brothers will be loved by the fans of Mohanlal,Dileep and Suresh Gopi. For others its only a watchable fare. CB is no Twenty Twenty.Though it tries too hard to be one, it only ends up as a pale imitation. Rating-5/10

Reviewed by nikhimenon@gmail.com,nikhimenon.blogspot.com

Unni Nair writes

The big plus in Nazrani is no doubt Mammootty who is the saving grace for the film. His electrifying presence and his mesmerizing performance as DK is what makes the film sufferable. Otherwise it is just old wine, which has been served in too many cocktails before.

The biggest negative aspect of the film is that it offers nothing new and is far from being impressive. The final scenes which are typical in nature could even provoke you into booing. For all its flaws however, the film is definitely worth a watch if you go for it without any presumptions or prejudices, and just for the sake of watching Mammookka. Hats off to the superstar! Such films are necessary to retain the star-status, and are good for the industry on the whole. Having said that, one cannot but remark that Nazrani could have been made into a better movie, given the potential of the Joshi-Mammootty-Renjith trio.

Movie Buzz writes

Nasarani reminds you of Joshy’s mass masala multi-starrers of the late 70 and 80’s. The film lacks a tight screenplay and is disjointed, as Ranjit has mixed old wine with recent happenings in Kerala politics, to churn out a sugar-coated family trifle pudding. The film drags towards the climax, and there is even continuity jerk as too many characters are there for no real reasons. Ranjit and Joshy presents their protagonist as a macho man riding on Mammookka’s image, and to be honest that is the only thing that saves the movie.

Mammootty as the wise-cracking Nasrani gets all the plum lines and is quite wacky. He melds effortlessly from casual comedy, soft romance to utter seriousness with consummate ease. Mammookka as Nasarani is the only reason for investing in a movie ticket for this film.

Paresh Palicha writes

If you are wondering why Ranjith’s craftsmanship is discussed at length when the film is actually directed by veteran Joshiy, is because Nazrani has Ranjith’s stamp all over it. It is as if he had set out to redeem himself after the disaster of Prajapathi. That does not mean that everything about Nazrani is drastically new. It is just that things are presented after being properly dusted and shined.

The skeletal of the story is the same as in any Ranjith film of the past decade and half. Only the garb of the characters has changed to the rich rubber estate owners of the Kottayam region.Somehow, the narrative loses steam post interval, as it becomes a typical murder mystery without much momentum, which leaves Nazrani to be just an average film.

See Also: MovieMazaa Review: Nasrani

( Movie Mazaa is our new guest contributor who will be doing reviews of the latest films)

Ranjith has this ability to spring the nastiest surprises on an unwary audience time and again. Armed up with ace-director Joshiy he cooks up Nasrani, a twitchy and jittery film that is at its best ambitious and at its worst lethally amateurish.

David John Kottarathil (Mammootty) is an affluent planter who languishes his time wooing Sarah (Vimala Raman) and running a gambler’s den. He’s indeed the archetypal Ranjith hero with all the integrity surging out from within, and yet who maintains a coarse façade that’s supposedly the definitive masculine trait. A local politician gets murdered eventually and Annie, (Muktha George) David’s foster-daughter emerges the prime accused. And what does all this perplexity lead to? Practically nothing, as it sadly turns out.

Nasrani isn’t really sure if it wants to be a superstar melodrama or an exhilarating thriller and its unfulfilling as either and ends up as an appalling hybrid. While the first half of the movie is elaborate with too many suspects and frail motives, the second half is wiped clean of any suspense as the tale slowly builds to a real mundane climax. The answers to the questions turn out to be sillier than the queries themselves. And of course the gaping plot holes, the never ending array of characters and the ludicrous dialogues cannot be forgotten in a hurry as well. For many of us the sole reason for watching Nasrani, would be to find out if Mammootty reworks the Achayan magic. Sadly he doesn’t, for even as a star vehicle, the movie is a dud. The actor is hazily considerate in his part and doesn’t emabarass himself. But the only time he comes alive is a handful of moments that fade away as quickly as they have made an appearance.

The script doesn’t make a convincing holder for the prime event of the day namely the murder, nor does Joshiy manage to string the beads up as a rational whole. July 4 and now Nasrani show the plight of a director at the low ebb of inventiveness as the finale unveils a ludicrous howler of a twist ending. The plot grows increasingly absurd, particularly towards the end when the characters no longer seem to be themselves. Just when things should be getting intriguing and complex, they become repetitive and computable. And the house of cards come crashing down with a thud.

Nasrani is an unengaging and colossally flat film that gets plain irksome after a while. It displays a horrific disparity of author and material that is maddeningly convoluted. And when the curiosity wave subsides, it should start its sinking into oblivion.

Photo courtesy:rediff.com

When this movie was announced with Kavya Madhavan as Mammotty’s heroine we were really excited, for in his 26 year career Kavya was never Mammootty’s heroine. We were later disappointed, for Kavya walked out of the movie, citing “the other woman” as the reason. As they say, the show has go to on and how hard is it to find young heroines now a days?. So Mukta along with Vimala Raman play the heroines in this Joshi film.

For the past 11 years, Mammotty had an Onam release and this time they were trying hard to make this film Mammotty’s Onam release. There was only one problem though: the movie was not filmed completely and there were only few weeks left. So two camera crews worked around the clock tried to make this happen, at least on Thiru Onam day, so that Mahabali would not be disappointed. Since Nasrani didn’t make it for Onam Sadya, Ore Kadal got more eye balls than it would have got normally.

Scripted and directed by Ranjith and Joshiy respectively, Nasrani zooms in on the life of a rich planter, David John Kottaram, whose luxurious life style is turned topsy turvy when his beloved ones are affected by certain incidents.Mammootty, whose last release, Mission 90 Days got mixed response from the audience, is all too keen to come out with another whopper. [Mammootty's Nasrani]

Joshi is a director who once rescued Mammotty from 3Bs: Benz, Briefcase, Baby Shalini, and gave him a new life with New Delhi. Moreover, one of the first ‘Achayan’ avatars by Mammootty was in Joshi’s Sangham. If anyone knows about the DNA of larger than life characters it is Ranjith. Both these people along with Mammotty form an explosive combination. Even though the story thread looks similar to Big B, the key will be narration.

Like Mammootty and his fans, we were also eager see to Nasrani released, especially to see if it would match Alibhai’s performance.

While realeasing his new film, July 4, named after his lucky day, Dileep has realized that July 5th is also a lucky day. The movie which could not be released on his birthday has done good business even when it was released a day later. The implications of this are great for this means that Dileep’s movie for next year can be titled July 5th. In fact if this trend continues, he will realize that any day is a lucky day provided that movie has something interesting for the viewer. Since there are 365 days in a year, the titles of all possible Dileep movies are covered now. A much more difficult problem for next year would be finding a heroine younger than Roma.

Reviewers asks us not to expect much comedy, which Dileep’s strength, in this movie,  as this is an action movie. They credit Joshy and script writers Sibi and Uday with an edge of the seat thriller.

Sify reviews:

Like all Joshy films of the 80’s, this one two starts in a prison, where the protagonist Gokuldas (Dileep), is brutally beaten up by the Superintend of the jail, former ACP Ramachandran (Siddique). Das actually is due to leave the prison for his good conduct on July 4 (hence the title) but Ramachandran is determined that he will not leave the jail alive! In a flashback Gokuldas, narrates to the good jailor Potti (Innocent), his life and times and why the bad cop Ramachandran is after his blood.

Gokuldas as a child witnessed his mother being brutally raped and killed by a cop, while he and other children accused of being thieves was in lock-up. Later he and the other children kill the cop and run away to Mumbai, where they join the underworld. But the death of an innocent taxi driver and close friend Gopalettan (Vijayraghavan) in a police encounter, makes Das change his attitude. He opts for a peaceful life in Coimbatore as a taxi driver, and also takes a decision to look after his friends daughters.

Now Running.com comments:

Dileep as Gokul Das is good and he does justice to his role. Notebook fame Roma as Sreepriya renders able support. Siddique as Ramachandran suits his role perfectly well. Devan as Sreepriya’s father Viswanath is OK. Innocent as Narayanan Potti, Vijayaraghavan as Gopalan, Lakshmi Ramakrishnan as Sreepriya’s mother, Cochin Haneefa as driver Abu etc do justice to their roles. All the others too fit well into their respective roles.

The technical support too is good. The songs in the film though are not impressive. The only song that is good is “Oru vaakum mindaathe…” To sum up, July 4 is a film that is well-made, but it doesn’t impress us much, the main reason being that this is not what is expected out of a Dileep movie. People expect him to play a merry and lively character, and if that is done, they would be ready to accept action too from him. But here we have action and drama only, sans the usual Dileep kind of humour. And that does harm to the film. And similarly in the second half, matters seem to drag a bit. July 4 can be termed a well-made but average kind of film that won’t come close to being a must-see.

Rediff.com says:

It is understandable that he would want to release his films on the fourth of July ever since his film Meesa Madhavan [Images] became a huge hit (it was also released on July 4). But to name a film after the date with what can be called as an excuse of a screenplay is surely stretching it too far.

When someone depends just on luck, without seemingly putting in any effort to achieve success, it creates a kind of revulsion in us. That is what happens with this film.

The excuse of a screenplay by Sibi K Thomas-Uday Krishna has layers and layers of flashback that make us feel as if we are peeling an onion! The story of Gokul Das (Dileep) is inspired from a number of films beginning with the Mani Ratnam classic Nayagan to numerous nondescript films of recent and not so recent past, with a song popping up at regular intervals as if to give respite to the harried viewers from the humdrum proceedings.