‘Patriot’ review: Mammootty-Mohanlal film favours mind games over set pieces
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Mahesh Narayanan’s Patriot begins with a curious disclaimer: “This film is not against digitalization of India”. For any piece of popular entertainment in India today, it helps to be as vanilla and nonconfrontational as possible, and at least in southern India few things are more popular than a Malayalam film starring Mammootty and Mohanlal, and directed by Mahesh Narayanan.
Add to that roster names like Fahadh Faasil, Nayanthara and Kunchacko Boban, and this is a film that comes preloaded with self-marketing torpedoes. The two Ms are coming together after 16 years, and their fortunes over those years create fluctuating waveforms even as they sit comfortably as Malayalam’s biggest stars.
Will such a film take the pains to offend popular sensibilities?It depends. What if the film fashions itself as an espionage thriller that is far away from the zip code of a Dhurandhar? What if it concerns itself with enemies within the state while trying to follow the footsteps of films like Enemy of the State? What if its central piece involves a surveillance software called Periscope that is dangerously close to Pegasus, the Israeli spyware that countries around the world including India have used to surveil journalists and activists? What if the film stages an assassination attempt that strangely mirrors the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 in Istanbul? In the opening scenes we hear a couple of interviewees talk about how they fell victim to the spyware, one a survivor who filed a sexual harassment complaint against minister JP Sundaram (Rajeev Menon) and the other an activist arrested under UAPA Act.Mammootty plays Daniel James, chief scientist at DRW or Defense Research
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