‘Thallumaala’ movie review: Tovino Thomas stars in all-out fight fest, with the depth of a social media reel

A kick to the jaw on the interval and an intensive, mind-numbing rinsing on the climax. That is, briefly, what Thallumaala serves to its viewers, dwelling as much as what the title guarantees — an extended string of fights. One will not be all the time positive the place one battle ends and the place one other begins. Each occasion within the movie, reasonably each second in it, both results in a battle or has one thing to do with the repercussions of a earlier battle.

One of many few sequences within the movie with none fights helps us put a finger on why some elements of this bloody spectacle truly works on display. Waseem (Tovino Thomas), the protagonist, is arriving in type because the chief visitor at a university perform, cheered on by adoring followers. A literary determine, who’s in the course of a speech on the wayward methods of the present technology, is clearly not happy by the welcome that Waseem will get. Oozing contempt, he asks Waseem whether or not he has made any optimistic contribution to the society to take a seat so imperiously on the chief visitor’s chair.

Waseem does put him down, utilizing his recognition with the younger viewers, however neither he nor his followers reply the query. For his sole declare to fame is a viral video of a battle at a marriage…. his marriage ceremony particularly. There isn’t any deeper reply to that query. It has to do with the character of fame within the present period. As an example, the inexplicable fame of some actuality present contestants makes us surprise if they’re dwelling in a parallel world. The movie additionally exists in such a parallel world, the place fists land on faces extra usually than it does in the actual world.

Even Waseem’s love affair with vlogger Beepathu (Kalyani Priyadarshan) begins with a battle. His associates are additionally equally liable to utilizing their fists, and once they cross paths with police officer Reji (Shine Tom Chacko) and his associates, issues get fairly ugly. Thallumaala is not like any of the opposite three movies that Khalid Rahman has made, and reveals glimmers of his craft as a director. For that matter, it’s not like some other movie made within the trade until now, besides Ajagajantharam, which additionally had a string of fights. Nonetheless, it’s a world away from the latter in its construction and milieu.

Thallumaala is a movie by which the battle choreographer has rather more to do than the scriptwriters Muhsin Parari and Ashraf Hamza. Among the many many carefully-planned set items, those which stand out, are an all-out free-for-all inside a theatre — with the display actually going up in flames — and a hilarious one inside an SUV. The dearth of substance within the narrative reveals up within the intervals between these well-crafted sensory explosions. The non-linear type that it follows and the relentless fight-song-fight routine helps in papering over a few of these failings, as one hardly will get a respiration area to suppose.

But, when one pauses to suppose, after all of the explosions have ceased, solely the excessive of among the motion sequences and their technical excellence is left and there may be nothing extra to write down house about. Even with all its craft, Thallumaala at finest has the depth of a social media reel. Nonetheless, that isn’t essentially a foul factor.

Thallumaala is at the moment operating in theatres