Pulimurugan Review - An Entertaining Larger than Life Tale

Sethumadhavan

Half an hour into Vysakh’s Pulimurugan and Mohanlal is yet to make his entry. But the audience is waiting quite patiently. So much so that in one of the earlier scenes while the young Pulimurugan is shown slaying a tiger, the audience knows what to expect from the superstar. And yes lo and behold,Mohanlal as Pulimurugan does make his entry and it happens in style as he combats a tiger to save his uncle and a couple of other men who are with him. This action sequence that marks his entry is more than proof of what the film is all about. This is a film featuring Mohanlal the superstar and it is not a vehicle for the actor in him. Of course if you had already seen the teaser and trailer this was made quite clear even early on. But any doubts whatsoever are dispelled once the entry sequence of Pulimurugan in the film is done away with.

Vysakh is a filmmaker known for delivering commercially successful Malayalam films like Pokkiri Raja (2010), Seniors (2011), Mallu Singh (2012) and Sound Thoma (2013), though his last 2 films-Vishudhan (2013) and Cousins (2014) did not really make an impact as such. Pulimurugan marks the joining together of Vysakh and Mohanlal for the first time. It is also the first film written by Udayakrishna (of the popular Udayakrishna-Siby K.Thomas duo) alone. In the news ever since the film was launched, the promos actually made cynics happy as they wrote off the film. Some of the fans were a little disappointed too by the slightly over the top nature of the film as it looked likely to emerge. But with the release date appearing closer, the hype that the film carried was only getting bigger and bigger. This was clearly reflected in the huge release that the film managed to get this weekend, both in Kerala as well as rest of the country.  This was enough to ensure that the film would go on to smash several opening day records in Kerala. But would that be all to it or would the film have a lot more to offer is what I set off to find when I went to watch Pulimurugan.

Murugan who is affectionately referred to as Pulimurugan by the people around him, is a lorry driver living in a forest village called Puliyoor. He is the saviour of the people who live in and around the forest settlement, for whenever there is a tiger on the prowl leading to loss of human lives it is only Murugan who comes to their rescue. As a child he had lost his parents early on, his mother dying while giving birth to his brother and his dad falling prey to a tiger. Murugan aided by his uncle Balaraman (Lal) hunts down the tiger responsible for his dad’s death and from then on he goes on to train himself to tackle man eating tigers. Murugan’s life now revolves around his wife Myna (Kamalinee Mukherjee), their daughter and his brother Manikuttan (Vinu Mohan). A turn of circumstances sees Murugan move away from Puliyoor along with his family. Soon the village is terrorized once again by a tiger. What makes Murugan move away from Puliyoor? Does he manage to get back to his forest settlement and come to the people’s rescue once again?  The rest of the film reveals all this and more.

To be honest there’s nothing remarkable about the writing of Udayakrishna and the story per se is rather simple. What works instead is Mohanlal’s characterisation as Pulimurugan and despite his physical limitations he does manage to pull of the action sequences very well. The film also dwells briefly upon the question of man vs animal and their equation in a natural habitat like the forest. Technically the film boasts of high standards, Shaji Kumar’s cinematography does great justice to the wonderful locations utilized for the film. Even at a run time of 161 minutes the film does not really test our patience, credit both to director Vysakh and editor Johnkutty for ensuring that the film does not lack in pace. Gopi Sunder’s background score and Tapas Nayak’s sound mixing also work well for the film. Peter Hein’s action choreography and the VFX work are both fantastic and are certainly the highlights of the film.

But not everything goes right with the film. Apart from the rather too simple tale it’s also extremely silly to use sexually explicit characters in the name of comedy which is just a little too crass. Take for example Balaraman who is shown as someone who impregnates his wife regularly, Poongayi Sasi (Suraj Venjaramoodu) a guy with a weakness to peep into bathrooms when a woman is inside or the voluptuous Julie (Namitha) who is shown openly lusting for Murugan. And why would a villain be named as Daddy Girija (Jagapati Babu)? It sounds ridiculously funny and thus you can’t really take the character seriously despite his arresting presence in the film. Pulimurugan has a huge ensemble star cast and it’s good to see a lot of them getting utilized well despite the impact of puli (tiger) and Murugan in the film. Kamalinee Mukherjee is almost always seen scowling, Vinu Mohan plays the typical simpleton, Lal is a natural as the boisterous Balaraman, Kishore as the forest officer who hates Murugan makes an impact while Bala, Gopakumar and Makarand Deshpande also get noticed.

But the film basically works to an extent thanks to the presence of Mohanlal who is completely at ease playing the larger than life character.  Pulimurugan has a lot of issues but thankfully the positives seem to weigh a lot more.

Bottomline

Vysakh and Mohanlal have combined together to give us a high voltage action film, a film that is certainly worth watching especially if you are a fan of Mohanlal and/or like action films.

Rating: 3/5