Santosh Sivan's Urumi is visually thrilling and viscerally satisfying. Let's start with the good -- the visual style is clearly this film's main asset. The filmmakers have confidence in the ability of the images to tell the most important aspects of the story. Santosh Sivan makes everything visually enticing whether working only as a cameraman or as a director and both. Urumi is a period film, where everything is woven together wonderfully by scriptwriter Shankar Ramakrishnan (Island Express, Café fame), a long time associate of director Ranjith.
Urumi is a historical, mythological thriller which zooms in on some years after the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut in 1498. The film is set in the backdrop of the fierce warrior clans of Northern Kerala in the sixteenth century in which Prithviraj plays Chirakkal Kelu Nayanar, who is the leader of the group that plans to kill Vasco da Gama. Kelu in his mission to end the invaders, has to encounter a number of conflicts within the Kings, ministers and peasants. The incidents that follow forms the rest of the story. The film presents the time between the second and third visit of Gama to India and portrays a different adaptation of how Gama could have met a bloody death.
Prithviraj's performance in this movie is like a show reel of what he is capable of doing. In this movie, he gets an opportunity to do some real good performance and he performs them convincingly with effortless ease. And he had gone through tremendous physical toil in this film as it involves horse riding, sword fighting, intense dialogue delivery and many more. Prabhudeva who plays an equally important role makes a cakewalk through lighter scenes and makes his Mollywood debut commendable. Genelia is the surprise pack of this movie. She never looked so gorgeous and lovely in her earlier movies and was awesome especially in the Kalaripayattu scenes. This role is a direct departure from her so called bubbly roles. Nithya Menon, Jagathy, and the actor who portrayed Gama did their part in an effective manner. The cameos by Arya, Vidhya Balan and Tabu are also impressive.
The director has been careful not to divert anywhere and he has shown his gift of narrative especially during the first half. Though the content was not much, he has been able to use his experience and kept the audience engaged. The main life and soul of the movie is the cinematography and the breath taking visual beauty without the aid of any CGI. They were well supported by a very good back ground score. The scrip has some loose ends, it lacks an emotional appeal and the character development could have been better. But Shanker Ramakrishnan's effort is mention worthy. Editing by Sreekar Prasad was crisp, two songs were worth humming and the music director of the movie Deepak Dev have succeeded in giving immense richness to the soundtracks. The picturization of the songs was unbelievably stunning. Art department and costumes get full marks.
The film deserves a special credit for many reasons, notable among them is the grandeur of the movie and the amazing technical aspects. This is surely a path breaker in terms of Malayalam film making. It is a valiant attempt to bring such genre to the modern day audience and present it with finesse so that it fits the historical angle and the today’s angle. Though the content part may not be impressive, it is the presentation and the engaging scenes that should take the movie to a success at the box office.
My Verdict : 3.5/5
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