Normally the director of this movie used to make comedy oriented movie. In fact this was his first movie in a non-comic fashion. This movie depicts the lives of fellow Indian prisoners in a jail situated in Andaman Islands in the time where Britishers were ruling India.The tortures and humiliations they faced during their imprisonment. This also shows how patriotic they were.
There are lot of such movies(which sells patriotism) released in India till now . But this movie is somewhat differently made from all the other makes. The main reason can be that this movie is mostly made using the real facts that happened during that time in Andaman.
This movie used all new technologies of that time to build sch a gem kind of visual experience. This was in fact the most expensive movie of Malayalam Industry at that time. But as it lacked the commercial elements which were essential for a movie to be hit , this registered as a flop movie in Malayalam movie industry. But till date, I can easily say that this is the first movie which is deserved to be in the list of top rated patriotic movies made in India . This even dubbed into several other regional languages of India.
Coming to technology side , this movie was perfect in this case too .Priyadarshan was too keen on skills as a director. The cinematography by Santhosh Sivan was applauded by several Indian movie legends. Ilayaraja proved once more that he is a maestro in his area as the songs were simply superb. Then there comes the actors. One of the finest actor that India has ever produced , the great Mohanlal . He led the main character with his impeccable acting skills which supported by esteemed presence of Prabhu Ganeshan . This movie features other acting gems of India as Amrish Puri,Tabu,Nedumudi Venu,Kochin Haneefa,Shankaradi,Delhi Ganesan,Sreenivasan,Annu Kapoor,etc.
Overall, my fellow movie lovers, You're not going to regret about the movie if you spend 3 hours for it. Its my word,believe it!