Santosh Sivan's `Urumi' is a beautifully set revenge drama, weaved around the tales of attempted assassination of Portuguese sailor, Vasco Da Gama. One of the highest budgeted movies of recent times in Mollywood, it is undoubtedly a modern day masterpiece with all round perfection in casting, performance and technical aspects.
Though this period drama extends to around three hours, 'Urumi' is crafted in such a way that it inspires and let you with it in the entire proceedings. The movie succeeds in avoiding regular cliches and uninteresting plot points. The movie opens in the present century where a carefree youth named Krishna Das gets an irresistible offer to sell his ancestor land. While he embarks to Kerala to sign the related records, he realizes the stories about his ancestors and about the fiery feats they had taken to keep their homeland free of invaders. And in the flashback we are introduced to the courageous fighter ( Arya) who is killed for his plans to eliminate the viceroy, Vasco Da Gama, of Portuguese empire. His son Chirakkal Kelu Nayanar now gets ready for revenge, making an 'Urumi' with the ornaments of innocents who was burnt alive when going to Mecca. The massacre was executed according to the order from Vasco da Gama. Kelu Naynar with his close Muslim friend from childhood Vavvali (Prabhu Deva) also get the support of princess Ayesha (Genelia) who is also plotting to fight the foreign invaders led by Vasco Da Gama. The film goes on to tell whether they succeed in their mission to eliminate the threat from Indian soil.
The scripts of the movie by Shankar Ramakrishnan, telling the events in between the second and third visit of Vasco Da Gama to India, is straight to the task. In the many highlights of the movie is the controlled dialogues which never boast a lot about freedom struggles. You cannot find any manipulated talks to boost heroism and no gimmicks in editing. The movie succeeds in throwing some realistic inputs into the life of ancient heroes shot in original looking locales. The director in Santhosh Sivan has been able to etch out the best from his carefully selected cast. Prithviraj is mesmerising as Kelu Naynar and lives up to the difficult demands of the role. In fact, this remains the best of the performances from Prithviraj, till date.Prabhudeva in an equally important role makes a cakewalk through lighter scenes and makes his Mollywood debut a celebration. Same is the case of Genelia, who is cast in a role that she will treasure for long. She is exceptional in the entire sequences, especially in the Kalaripayattu scene. Her looks and controlled performances gives the air of the mature actor that she has transformed into. Nithya Menon, Jagathy, Amol Gupte, and Alex looks very effective in their roles. The cameos by Arya, Vidhya Balan and Tabu are also impressive.
The music director of the movie Deepak Dev have succeeded in giving immense richness to the soundtracks with his songs and background scores, set in epic proportions. All of his songs comes up in the right places. The technical crew including editing by Sreekar Prasad and camera department headed by the director and Anjali Shukla, has given the best of the outputs, which are hard to describe in words. So is the case of the art director, the makeup team lead by Renjith Ambadi and costume designer Eka Lakhani who seems to be in the running for the Nation's best accolades in the coming National awards, for their contributions to this movie..
All in all, 'Urumi' is a must watch for all those who love quality cinema. Redefining the traditional qualities of period dramas, `Urumi' is sure to become a movie that will be respected and adored by Mollywood for its creative panache, tremendous performances and great technical wizardry.
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