Movie review 'Sakhavu': The tale of two comrades

Cast: Nivin Pauly, Aishwarya Rajesh, Aparna Gopinath, Gayathri Suresh, Sreenivasan
Director: Sidhartha Siva
Rating: 3 stars

The word ‘revolution’ was once so powerful: it represented the efforts for the uplift, rights and living of the downtrodden. ‘Sakhavu’ Krishnan belongs to that glorious era of communism where a comrade always stood for the well-being of his fellow beings and earned a heartful of gratitude and little else. The movie brilliantly introspects a political ideology that cuts across two generations of politicians. The journey begins with a budding, new-gen leader, courses through the life and time of a people’s leader and culminates in the discovery of what it takes to be a politician now.

In the beginning we see a young, self-serving leader of a left-wing political party — Nivin Pauly as Krishna Kumar-who is always (and only) bothered about taking himself to top. Now holding a pivotal post at the district level, he dreams of scaling more heights by hook or crook. A party-assigned life-saver act soon befalls on him. The mission connects him to comrade Krishnan (it’s Nivin again), who, in a government hospital’s intensive care unit, battles a tough ordeal in his life. Krishna Kumar at first tries to cash in on the ailing man’s family and flee the scene at the next available opportunity but he is in a life-altering path as he gets to know more about the elderly comrade.

There is a flashback where everything is set minimal and rides the movie to a thrilling second half. There is room for romance that consumes very little screen time. Nivin Pauly as a veteran left ideologue in the Sidhartha Siva directorial political thriller never goes out-of-bounds. The first half lagging a bit in a bid to establish Sakhavu Krishnan being the only drawback, the movie shows it is possible to effectively portray revolution without less wordly pyrotechnics, sloganeering, blood and gore. After all, it’s raining politico movies in Mollywood. Hail revolution!