King Of Kotha Riveting & Powerful

King Of Kotha(Hindi, Opening On 1 September)

Starring Dulquer Salmaan, Shabeer Kallarakkal, Prasanna, Gokul Suresh, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Nyla Usha, Chemban Vinod Jose, Shammi Thilakan, Saran, Shanthi Krishna  Anikha Surendran

Directed by Abhilash Joshiy

Rating: *** ½

Crafted  with the sharp edge of  a harpoon, King Of Kotha, is  a brilliant  bloodbath.Bestial and  unsparing, it  goes through several  eras  and auras of  tansformations of skullduggery with transfixing passion.

Although it is the  story of two goons who love to hate each other over a period time(vintage  cars, nostalgic songs,detailed sets etc) , it is Dulquer Salmaan’ s Raju that holds the plot’s attention from first to last. With a cigarette  swinging from his thick lips  and curly hair as  wild and untameable as  the man himself Dulquer’s Raju comes across   an epitome of sinster  swag, though I preferred him with less swag in the second-half when he strikes a frightening forlorn figure.

Raju’s friendship with the Judas of the show Kannan Bhai (Shabeer Kallarakkal) is  the nearest this ruddlerless  screenplay comes to a  core. Raju and Kannan’s  journey from love to betrayal  leading up  to  an unnecessarily  prolonged fist-to-fist  climax rounds off what could be  designated one of  the  better  gangster epics in recent times; for  epic, King Of Kotha assuredly is.

It is vast in design and  spectral in its  emotional dynamics. Where  it  falls short  is in stitching  together  the human relationships  more cogently.  There are way too many ganglads plotting their own little kingdoms in different corners of  the plot.Also, the female characters, even Aishwarya Lekshmi normally seen  in power-backed roles,  are patchy.

 It is like  a powerful pastiche  waiting to come together in a  climactic conflagration  pulling  back just before hitting the  highspot.

Technically, King Of Kotha is  beyond reproach.  Nimish Ravi’s cinematography pries into  broken hearts and lets us view these  incomplete  desperately  unhappy  characters for what they really are. Uma Sankar Satapathy  editing could have been less generous to  the choreographed action scenes some  of which go on for so long you just want  it to stop

Everyone  would have his  favourite performances. Mine would be Gokul Suresh  as a cautionary  sub-inspector and  Chemban Vinod Jose as a gangster who insists on speaking in broken English. Later  in a bizarre  illustration of  genealogical continuity,  the  gangster’s son speaks the same way.A  spot of humour in a film that would have worked even better  if it hadn’t taken itself so seriously.

King Of Kotha is  a well-crafted period gangster drama with every actor  staying in character even when  the  sprawling screenplay scatters  all over the  place. Director Abhilash Joshiy maintains a  sense  of  rhythm  in the narration even when the  plot falters.