Movie Review | ‘Michael’ lacks creativity

This Ranjit Jeyakodi Friday tryst is just another meaningless indulgence in violence, action, and thrills. This vendetta-seeking tale that divides the homo sapiens into the evil and the perfect and the evil having a long opulent stay is so, so stacked with predictable templates and twists that you feel cheated that someone fooled you yet again with a pretentious claim of having made a fresh film with a new story to tell.

It is indeed intriguing as to why a creative filmmaker would set out in the first place to embark on a story that has its core been told so many times. Oh! Yes, Raj Kapoor took up the age-old ‘boy-meets-girl in rich and poor background’ story but told it in a way only he could with ‘Bobby’. Is Ranjit Jeyakodi out there to tell the old story, but with character and difference? Not even attempted.

Wronged by circumstances, young Michael is the illegitimate son of the local villain Gurunath (Gautham Vasudev Menon) and a club singer. When the relationship comes to the notice of the wife of Gurunath, Charulata (Anasuya Bharadwaj) she spews fire and literally sets the house on fire. Michael grows up as an orphan. He wears dare and devilry on his sleeve and even saves Gurunath from an attack by the enemies – establishing a bond with his dad who for all his intelligence does not bother to be informed of the crooner or the child. He, however, gets the orphan Michael under the tutelage of his man Swami (Ayyappa Sharma) who rears the kid to be a courageous killer in the enemy camp: Michael (Sudeep Kishan).

Villains, enemy camps, drug cartels, fights, one-upmanship, and smart alecs with muck on their face is now what we get to view in the name of the story.

Gurunath has a proverbially useless yet ambitious son in Amar Varun Sandesh who hams with not a single positive movement in the entire 150 minutes at the theatre.

The narrative gets on the rail when Gurunath sets Michael on the task of eliminating two people in Delhi. One is Theera (Divyansha Karthik) and her Dad Ratan (Anish Kuruvilla) – the latter guilty of an abortive assassination attempt on Gurunath.

Why such a low-lying villain in the hierarchy of baddies plans without success such a brave abortive move is part of the story.

Instead of moving aimlessly like Ranjit Jeyakodi, time to tell you that Michael simply can't get himself to shoot Theera and also fails to kill Ratan on knowing that he is the dad of Theera. The team of baddies troop in and make crude attempts to kill Michael who raises like the proverbial phoenix and sets the righteous perspective in place. What is however very slim is the note with which the film ends: a sequel. This is more in the nature of a warning than a foundation for the continued trust with chaos.

The cast is surely and justifiably not convinced of the script. They all appear to be on paid holiday. The likes of Varun Sandesh and Anasuya Bharadwaj are over the top. Gautham Vasudev Menon has the best role in the film. With a suspect dialogue delivery style, he fails to take off as the crafty villain who is aware of all that is happening.

Divyansha Kaushik needs immediately to do something about her emotive skills as she looks lost in the film.

Vijay Sethupathi and Varalaxmi Sarathkumar arrive too late. They have half-baked roles and can do nothing to salvage the film. Expectedly the film rests heavily on the central character Michael essayed by Sundeep Kishan. This is not the time to evaluate whether he has the wherewithal to carry this film on his shoulder. If he does, it is a well-kept secret. A single serious expression for a constant companion to a Tollywood mainstream actor is a contradiction in terms.

This film is buried in too much mediocrity and lack of creative honesty to make an impact at the Box Office which obviously is the only objective.