Vishal's films have their share of takers in the Telugu States. For someone with a good number of fans among girls, his character  in Kathakali offers him an opportunity to endear himself to them.  He shines in a role that has several shades and that's the best part.

Director Pandiraj engages Madhusudhan Rao, who plays a ruthless goon from Kakinada and has two trusted sidekicks.   Vishal returns from California and his love story that started four years ago is narrated in a non-linear fashion.  Vishal and his brother have bad blood with Madhusudhan Rao, but Vishal has put all that behind.  At a time when he is about to get married to his girlfriend (played by Catherine Tresa), Madhusudhan Rao is murdered.  The rest of the film is about how Vishal and his family are sucked into the consequences of the murder.  Travails that they never bargained for follow.

Kathakali is a well-narrated suspenseful flick.  The best part of it is that Vishal's characterization and the many shades are interesting.  He is entertaining as a lover boy who woos Catherine Tresa.  And he is immensely watchable as a commoner whose family faces an existential threat.  Watch him click a selfie with the badly bashed up baddies.  Watch him in the scene where Catherine mocks at his affected style.  Watch him in the scenes where he is speaking like a harassed but confident commoner with the CI (played by Sreejith Ravi).

Vishal's scenes with his petrified brother (played by Mime Gopi), and the scenes with Karunas are good.

An unexpected murder of the town’s biggest rowdy becomes chaotic with various murder suspects involved and completely off the hook is Vishal, but his past makes him the primary suspect, with rival gangs and cops on the hunt. The director takes time to narrate the sequences, post murder the movie gets going swiftly thanks to a spot-on screenplay.

Catherine Tresa looks gorgeous and surely, her best is yet to come.  The actress does her role pretty well in the romantic portions. It's good to see Karunas back in the comedy avatar after a long time, he comes as the usual stereotyped sidekick of the hero.

The movie has two songs, both in the first half and they look to have been inserted for the sake of it; that said, the BGM from Hip Hop tamizha is interesting and flows with the script. His ability to increase the orchestration for critical scenes shows how the musician has grown through the days.

Plenty of portions have been shot aesthetically in rain, the muddles of water around apartments, bus travel, chase sequences all of these have been captured brilliantly by Balasubramanian, kudos to the cinematographer for having given a realistic touch. Sreejith Ravi as the cynical police officer looks tailor made for the role; he comes in the second half and does his job well. Another biggest plus of the movie is the runtime of 2 hours, crisp editing and neat screenplay has done it for Kathakali.

Verdict: Kathakali has a tight screenplay, and good performances by Vishal and others.