Barroz Review - Crashing Bore!
Ashwin Ram
Barroz is a mythological adventure drama presented in 3D. The film is directed and the lead role is played by Mohanlal. Santosh Sivan has helmed the camera department.
Premise:
Mohanlal is the guardian of Lord Da Gama’s treasures for centuries. He thrives to handover all the precious stuff to the Lord’s bloodline. How he does it by finding the respective person forms the crux of the story.
Writing/ Direction:
The core line of linking Mohanlal’s character with Vasco Da Gama is interesting, the subject has a logical element to it as well. But the development is notoriously lame, mainly due to its pathetic presentation. The flow literally had zero redeeming qualities, not even a single moment was entertaining. The kids might be the primary target audience, but the situations cannot be this basic and tasteless. It seemed like a complete period film right from its posters, but turns out most of the film takes place at Goa in the current timeline, that too with a pointless destination. The people at Goa are treated as mere jokers, all they do is conduct strikes on roads to ban Casinos in every scene, and there is no reasonable explanation for it. Mohanlal’s direction is a huge letdown as sadly many elements are so amateurishly placed in the film and they don’t suit the modern format. The fluctuations between timelines are very dry too, there is not enough spark in writing to brighten the connections. Even from a screenplay perspective, there is a potential crux, but the progression is sluggish beyond limits, and the worst part is nothing effective takes place till the end.
Performances:
No big scope to perform for Mohanlal and there isn’t any emotional angle to score as well. Shayla McCaffrey who plays the Portugal girl role is stone-faced and she struggles to express. Guru Somasundaram plays a cop who barely has any importance in the storyline.
Technicalities:
Songs are outright terrible, and it was hard to digest the fact that most of them were Mohanlal vocal. On the other hand, the background score was very impressive, despite the lackluster situations, the music really tried to pump it up. Another feather in the cap work by Santosh Sivan, the 3D visuals were crystal clear and not even a single disturbing frame for the eye. Monotonous editing to be precise as the scene order is so random and the jump between the timelines and locations are so carelessly put together. Such an inconsistent VFX work, many shots go haywire because of the low-quality output.
Bottomline
Convincing one-liner as the plot idea is fresh, but lands as an unbearable flick with hardly any enjoyable moments and worthy situations to give it a try. 3D is probably the only saviour, just like the recent Pan-India blunder which came out recently.
Rating - 2/ 5