Adi

"Bruised male ego" cinematic universe gets one more entry in this partially entertaining film with a half-baked climax. The reason the film works to a large extent is its central performances - a cast-against-type Shine Tom Chacko and a perpetually perplexed Ahaana Krishna. Playing a newly married couple, they exhibit the right amount of spontaneous chemistry, making their (budding) relationship enjoyable to watch. Ahaana's character gets a meaty part to play in the proceedings, and she does fairly well, in what comes off as a subversion of this particular screenplay template.

When the film's core conflict presents itself, it feels like an extension of writer Ratheesh Ravi's previous work Ishq. The developments, while initially interesting, progressively get weaker in the second half leading up to an unrealistic (and kinda meh) finale. This also has to do with Dhruvan's one-note baddie act, even when his character gets some texturing in the script. Also, more than in Ishq, the absence of the police in this story bothered me.