The Great Father Malayalam Movie
"Who was that man?" David Ninan asks his daughter Sara while sitting at the beach. The girl keeps silence for a moment and runs a few meters before kneeling down on the sand. Perhaps, this intriguing question lets the viewers' imagination go wild while watching "The Great Father". The opening sequence itself heralds the impending hide-and-seek game that creates the thriller mood to the film.
Haneef Adeni, in his maiden outing as a filmmaker, appears to be maintaining a balancing act in handling the plot and the stardom of Mammootty throughout the film. When Adeni hinges on the star value, the narration loses its gravity, derailing the whole plot.
With succinct dialogues and stylish appearance, David Ninan is a tailor-made character for Mammootty. Sara (Baby Anikha), a jovial schoolgirl, is very close to her father David Ninan, a builder in the city. She believes that her dad is a super hero, and she used to tell her classmates about David's adventures.
An unexpected incident in the life of Sara affects David and his wife Michelle (Sneha), a doctor, badly. Sara is struggling to come out of that harrowing experience. Meanwhile, similar incidents occur in other parts of the state. Now David tries to trace the perpetrator by himself. In another route, a CB-CID officer Andrews (Arya) also searches for the serial killer.
The ensuing action and the "whodunit?" question create ample suspense but the events leading to the climax are not convincing. Interestingly, actress Sneha was part of an award-winning Tamil film which dealt with the same issue.
In "The Great Father" when the content is dominated by heroism, you trip into the realm of make-belief. The film could have avoided the trite route to present the father as great; instead more focus could have been given to the screenplay.
The platter contains an amalgam of heroic acts and a social problem. As a viewer, you might tend to lap up the former rather than the turnout of events in the film. "The Great Father" proceeds well but peters out dramatically in the end.
Roby Varghese Raj, who cranks the camera, has done a commendable job, especially the aerial shots have been done aesthetically. Sushin Shyam's background score is equally laudable as it gets along well with the scenes.
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Kiran Allan