Marakkar-Arabikadalinte Simham movie review: Mohanlal’s film is ambitious but underwhelming

Priyadarshan’s highly anticipated period epic Marakkar: Arabikadalinte Simham is a refreshing departure from the kind of films the filmmaker is known for. It attempts to tell the heroic and fearless story of Kunjali Marakkar, an admiral in Cochin’s King’s fleet, who played a key role in the war against the Portuguese. The film is ambitious on all accounts but it lacks the kind of writing or even moments that set it apart from a film like Baahubali.

Relying on predictable scenes and bland drama, big budgeted Marakkar never lives up to the hype that the promos had promised, and ends up as a tiring, underwhelming film in which majority of the actors (in their 50s) struggle to make one action sequence that could leave you in awe.

Watch the trailer for Marakkar: Arabikadalinte Simham

Mohanlal plays Muhammed Ali alias Kunjali Marakkar from the royal Marakkar clan. The Marakkars dedicated their life to fight the invasion of Portuguese on Cochin, and Kunjali is the last heir of the family who spends most of his life as a pirate after his entire family is killed right in front of his eyes by the Portuguese armymen.

Kunjali vows to take revenge and becomes the messiah for the poor. He robs from the rich and distributes the loot among the poor. The Portuguese plan on taking over the kingdom of Cochin by waging a war, and the only person who can stop them is Kunjali, who is widely popular for his war tactics at sea. When Kunjali decides to join hands with the king of Cochin, little does he expect that he has a big price to pay.

Marakkar, apart from depending on lazy writing, also lacks a singular element that could have made a film of this scale truly memorable. There isn’t a single scene in the movie that makes you sit up in your seat and stare in amazement. Except for the two action sequences, which are just okay, it feels like a chore to sit through rest of the film which also feels bloated at three hours long. The action episodes were talked about as one of the highlights, but it is so boring to watch most of these actors struggle to pull off these scenes convincingly.

Priyadarshan fills the film with so many characters that you spend most of the viewing time trying to remember who plays who. Keerthy Suresh and Manju Warrier don’t get the kind of roles they deserve. Then there are Suniel Shetty and Arjun Sarja, two of the fittest actors in the country today but they aren’t used effectively in the action scenes either. Pranav Mohanal plays the younger version of his father, and he owns the initial 20 odd minutes of the movie with his charming screen presence.

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There’s a lot of conflict between the key characters but sadly, you don’t feel it in the scenes. You sense that one character doesn’t wish good for the other, but the writing makes these scenes so lifeless. Even the ever-reliable Mohanlal struggles to keep the film afloat as he’s hardly convincing in the most crucial emotional scenes of the movie. It’s as though he was least interested in embracing the character of Marakkar, which could’ve been written and handled better. As you leave the cinema hall, you really begin to question what indeed earned this film a National Award.