Sibi Malayil’s Kireedam, which came out in 1989, was about an aspiring policeman who ends up becoming a gangster due to circumstances. King of Kotha, directed by Abhilash Joshiy, is a period gangster flick that’s set in the same decade, but you won’t find anything common between the two films – not even the shirt styles of the gangsters. And that’s the tragedy of our time. In the rush to make films that will appeal to everyone, we make films that are about no one.
Kotha is a coastal town with a drug problem, and Circle Inspector Shahul Hassan (Prasanna) is transferred to the town to take care of it. The kingpin is Kannan ‘bhai’, played by a formidable Shabeer Kallarakkal. He has a bad eye and the reason is Raju ‘bhai’. Why all these Malayali characters call each other bhai like they are in Season 3 of Mirzapur is anyone’s guess. It takes over 30 minutes for us to see Raju, so we know that all the build-up is for the GOOD bad boy. Enter Dulquer Salmaan.
Raju is stuck with every writing cliché you can think of – he has daddy issues, a KGF brand fiery mother, a sweet and clueless sister who always needs saving, and a Pushpa-inspired shaggy mane – but Dulquer makes the role work. He brings the fireworks to the scenes, and even if we never empathise with Raju at any point, at least, he’s interesting to watch.
The dynamic between Kannan and Raju is at the core of the film, and the actors share great chemistry on screen. Shabeer holds his own against Dulquer’s stardom, and the bromance that runs into enmity makes for an engrossing plot thread. But the screenplay is so stuffed with wannabe mass moments that it hardly allows us to feel anything. When every dialogue is a punch dialogue and you have to rely on a loud, snazzy background score throughout to create an effect, it suggests that the filmmaker doesn’t trust the content enough.
Ever since Don Vito Corleone called drugs a dirty business in The Godfather (1972), our homegrown mafia don heroes have been calling it a dirty business, too. It’s what separates the mafia don heroes from the mafia don villains. King of Kotha treads along the same path, with even lesser conviction. The reason Raju won’t do drugs is love. Now, it’s possible that a don could have such a passionate heart that he shuns a very profitable business, but for us to buy this, the love story needs some depth. If not an ocean, at least a pond. What we get is a puddle.
One minute, Raju is dancing to an item number with Ritika Singh (was there nothing else that a former mixed martial artist could do in an action film?!) and the next minute, we’re told that he’s fallen in love with Tara (Aishwarya Lekshmi) who disapproves of the drug trade. Tara walks in and out of the film, leaving behind a trail of confusion as to what she actually wants to do in life. The other “strong” woman character is gangster moll Manju (Nyla Usha), who seems to have been modelled on Telugu TV serials.
Despite its frustrating flaws, the first half of King of Kotha has your attention because of the world building. The period is recreated through film posters, advertisements, and colouring, and characters like Chemban Vinod Jose’s English-speaking don add a quirky touch to the proceedings. But the second half is sheer mayhem as the film plods through one tiring action sequence after another. The inefficient editing leaves us with a narrative that is neither cogent nor cohesive, and it is a task to sit through the runtime of nearly three hours when you have to listen to lines like “A real man takes his love to the grave”.
“A few days later”, “Three weeks later” – the text appears on screen to indicate the changing days, but it could have been “A millennium later” and our characters would be doing exactly the same thing – mindlessly slashing and shooting others. It all culminates in one grand action set piece where Raju kills so many people that the whole industry must have faced a shortage of fake blood after the shoot. Viewed on their own merit, these action sequences are well choreographed, but they leave you cold because they don’t add any value to the film. A ‘sumangali gunshot’ or a ‘heart surgery stabbing’ may sound very cool on a gangster’s CV but saturating the film with these violent visuals just leaves the audience unmoved after a point. So, when a man is stabbed through his mouth and the knife comes out of his head, the only response you have is, “Yeah right.”
King of Kotha is teeming with ambition to put the Malayalam film industry on the pan-Indian map. But is imitation the way to go? Do we have to squeeze the heart out and replace it with a plastic formula of gangsters and guns, mother sentiment, and item numbers to get there?
Sorry, but the king has no clothes.
Watch King of Kotha trailer here:
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the producers or any other members of its cast and crew.
Sowmya Rajendran writes on gender, culture, and cinema. She has written over 25 books, including a nonfiction book on gender for adolescents. She was awarded the Sahitya Akademi’s Bal Sahitya Puraskar for her novel Mayil Will Not Be Quiet in 2015. Views expressed are the author's own.