Passenger

Banner: Vijay Combines

Cast: Sreenivasan, Dileep, Mamtha, Lakshmi Sharma, athathy Sreekumar, Nedumudi Venu, Sivaji Guruvayoor, Sona Nair, Ruby

Direction: Renjith Shankar

Production: S P Pillai, Sankaran Kutty

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The movie which is also scripted by the director tells the happenings in the life of three persons in a span of three days. Sathyanath, working in a pharmaceutical company, is a committed middle class man living with his simple dreams and desires. His routine includes daily to and fro travel on train from Nellayi to Ernakulam south, with his bunch of friends working in various firm in the city. A sharp tongued citizen with good observations and responsibility, he has a peculiar habit of taking a short sleep for half an hour amidst his travel schedule.

Adv. Nandan Menon , a social activist is hell bend of evacuating a multinational company from the shores of Maranattukara, which is planning to displace thousands from the land for carrying on with their mineral sand mining activities. He is running cases pleading adequate govt. intervention in countering this sand mafia. He is adequately supported in this venture by his wife and visual media journalist, Anuradha, who is presently engaged in exposing the nexus between home minister Thomas Chacko and the foreign companies.

On the same night Sathynathan, late from his work, catches a different train, remains asleep for long and meet Nandhan Menon in the train. Anuradha, who is now chased by the goons of the minister, also gets alleged for a murder. Sathyanathan who was perfect stranger for the couple, now decides to do his share to help his new find friend who is doing good for the society. The movie then takes the shape of an edge of the set thriller, and races ahead to an indulging finale.

Bottom Line

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A well executed thriller

Currency

Banner: Indostar Movie Magic

Cast: Jayasuriya, Mukesh, Kalabhavan Mani, Meera Nandhan

Direction: Swathy Bhaskar

Music: Siddharth Bipin

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The movie traces the journey of Keshu, the only son of Subhadramma, a school drop-out, who slowly and gradually takes to the world of crime. An introvert, he is working for a minuscule salary in a Photostat store, owned by Indrapalan (Suraj Venjaaramoodu), a clerical staff in the RTO office. Keshu, who doesn’t have any friends, is madly after Rose (Meera Nandhan), a sales girl in the nearby boutique. Other than working at the store and roaming quietly after Rose, he often takes Photostat copies of currency notes and finish working on them with meticulous precision, but fears to spend them. One day he happens to meet Daany D,souza,(Mukesh) an over-ambitious Anglo Indian,  who always aspires  to make the right moves to get that big break in life. He realizes the competence of Keshu in creating fake currencies and forces him to continue with his act, for emerging successful beings in life. And how Keshu falls into this pits of no-return, forms the rest of the story.

Swathy Bhaskar's debut venture initially has its heart at the right place and that's made abundantly clear 30 minutes into the film. After a well engaging first hour. its wafer thin storyline gets repetitive. There's not much movement in the story after a point and the proceedings get prolonged and tedious. The director proves himself as an accomplished storyteller in several individualistic scenes, mostly in the first half. But the screenplay isn't foolproof with romantic track ending up as the weakest link in the enterprise, with Jayasurya and Meea Nandhan sharing zero chemistry in the sequences.

Bottomline

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Currency - is a different experience

Bhagyadevatha

Cast: Jayaram, Kanika, including Nedumudi Venu, Inncoent, Mamukoya, Venu Nagavally, K P A C Lalitha

Direction: Sathyan Anthikkad

Production: Kalasangham

Music: Illayaraja

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Jayaram plays Benny, a diploma holder, who runs the franchisee of a local cable TV channel in a kuttanad village. After the death of his father, he had to shoulder the responsibilities of his large family consisting of his mother, grandmother  and two sisters. A little bit ambitious, Benny thinks of varied  ways to make it big, with short cuts. According to the advice of Sadanandan, a tourist guide and Benny's friend, he  decides to marry Daisy,  with the belief that he can raise substantial amounts as dowry, with which he can  buy a fishing boat. He gives advance for the boat but after the marriage, he is totally disappointed  as Daisy 's father Anto fails to get the promised amount at the right time from the bank.  Benny's dreams get a severe blow and as a result he throws away his wife and engage into bad words with her father. But Benny suddenly fall prey of wrong doings as Daisy wins an amount of two crores in a lottery .

Bottom Line : 

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'Bhagya Devatha' is a good watch. Altogether ''Bhagya Devatha'' is a perfect prescription for the families of the state, who always loved to enjoy the sathyan stamp of quality narratives.

Banaras

Cast: Vineeth, Kavya Madhavan, Navya Nair, Nedumudi Venu, Harisree Ashokan, Jagathy Sreekumar, Suresh Krishna, Devan, Anoop Chandran, Kalaranjini, Urmila Unni

Direction: Nemom Pushparaj

Production: M.R. Nair

Music: M. Jayachandran

Navya, Vineeth excel in Banaras

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With a highly predictable story lines and with no engaging twists, the movie offers very little surprises to avoid a cold feet. The movie is all about Hari (Vineeth), a theatre activist who moves out of his village leaving his childhood sweet heart Devu (Navya), to secure his M. Phil degree on North Indian dances from the famous Banaras Hindu University. More than his fancy for continuing his studies with TBHU, Hari wants to unearth the details about his mother who died in the holy city when he was a child.

Hari by circumstances is forced to become a Saviour and protector of a beauty named Amritha (Kavya Madhavan), a gifted dancer who is also studying in the same University. The movie goes on to tell the impact of these short acquaintances of Hari with the half Malayalee girl, which takes a toll on the life of the young man.

Samastha Keralam PO

Cast:	Jayaram, Jagathy, Jagashdeesh, Janardhanan, Suraj Venjaaramoodu, Salimkumar, Kalabhavan
Direction:	Bibin Prabhakar
Music:	M Jayachandan

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"An average watch"

The movie has Jayaram as Prabhakaran (Jayaram), a hardcore Gandhian, who is also a former Panchayat member of a remote village called Thonoorkkara. He has devised his own ways of protesting against the corrupt practices followed by Avarachan and co, who is ruling the Panchayath. Though he lives in a house owned by his uncle and is finding it difficult to manage his state of financial affairs, he is a staunch advocate of principles in every little steps, he takes. The movie offers many plot divergences, that comes in the form of marriage of his adopted sister Radhika, arrival of his cousin Renjini and a short mistaken love affair, and then the routine muscleman crook from Mumbai for providing  a little fisticuffs and the crude plots of all other bad souls in the village to corner this virtuous conscientious protagonist. And as expected the movie calls the final shot when Prabhakaran emerges the winner after several tests of his patience, honesty and sincerity.

The movie does make an engaging opening with Prabhakaran presenting his village and its interesting stock characters including Chandy (Jagadheesh), President Avarachan's nephew who follow his uncle's footsteps. Subramanian (Salimkumar), who works in Prabhakaran's book stall Osharam Abdu (Suraj Venjaarmoodu), a miserly auto driver,  Reghu (Kalabhavan Prajod), who  works in a milk society and, Mao Mohanan, a Maoist who always dreams of the arrival of  revolution. The movie rushes past the interval, lags with usual sentiments track for a while, falling into the pits of conventional drama and progresses into a leisurely climax. The problem with the movie is the petty regular, but predictable storyline by K Gireesh Kumar, who has sprinkled some interesting dialogues all over, but fails to present any more surprises to the viewers.

2 Harihar Nagar

Cast: Mukesh, Jagadheesh, Lakshmi Rai, Ashokan and Siddhique

Direction: Lal

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"It’s a fun train"

‘To Harihar Nagar’ definitely offers rib tickling comedy and delightful watch from the word goes, with apt mixing up of inexhaustible laughter and few moods of seriousness at intervals. The film starts with the three lead players Mahadevan, Appukuttan, Govindan Kutty  now well settled in various business enterprises in Gulf and Bangalore,  coming together to celebrate the betrothal of the fourth in their group, Thomas Kutty. Govindan Kutty is now a successful builder while Mahadevan is a new age personality development guru, teaching people to regain confidence and success, though he is very unsuccessful with his own life. Appukuttan is a dentist now, but have little change in his regular idiotic senseless dialogues. They decide to ignite their youthful mischief and revert to their days of hectic activity, at least for the ten days they have got, away from their families. In the Govindan Kutty's villa where they had been hatching plans to woo girls ten years ago, they regroup and decide to pull pranks. As usual, they are enamored by the charms of a neighbouring beauty Maya, a bar singer. The four are immediately into everything to please her which lands them into further troubles.

Red Chillies

Cast : Mohanlal

Direction : Shaji Kailas

Production : Ranjith Rajaputra

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"Less 'Hot' But A Sure "Hit"

Essentially a murder mystery, the film has Mohanlal as OMR (a contraction of Oyyarath Madathil Ramanathan or is it that of catchphrase 'Onnum Marakkilla Rama''?), a tough and shrewd NRI business magnet who is well settled with his business firms and enemies, all across the Middle East and Singapore. He also runs an FM station 919.1 - OMR FM, which is based in Kochi. All the nine leading jockeys (RJ's) of the FM station are madly in love with this high flying businessman, whom they have never met in person. On New Year's Eve, OMR promises his jockeys that he would come over to meet them and reveal something to one of them. And the jockeys who are more than happy go around partying, dancing, disobeying traffic rules and creating panic but finds at the receiving end of all horrors, with one gigolo dead in their house. The very next morning also announces a hit and run case, presumably by the same Prado of the jockeys, killing ten workers who were on a round the clock agitation in front of a factory, including their leader Maani Varghese. The girls with a gang rape case and killing of almost a dozen people due to their displeasing manners, flee the spot .But as the police led by Commissioner Vyasan and Mani's IPS's son, Stalin track the car, the business baron OMR is forced to crash land in his home country with his own cheer girls, to save his other staff from a tricky plot that is aimed at him. He takes on the entire system single handedly, sometimes becoming an advocate, often a business tycoon and even the deity of a village.