Plot Summary – Police officer Ayyappan is an upright man who always strives to do the right thing. Things change when a retired army havildar, Koshy, settles in his village and the two egos clash.

Language – Malayalam

★★★★½ 

Watched on 07 May 2021

Ayyappanum Koshiyum is such a unique experience as a film. In essence, the film revolves around the clash of two egos. Initially, it is framed as a David and Goliath story, there’s a clear distinction between black and white, good and bad. But the beautiful thing about this film is that it evolves so much from there. Each character is so flawed and by the end of it, you don’t know who you’re rooting for. Each scene serves the purpose of fleshing out either one of our characters and whether that’s directly or indirectly, we form this points system in our head and eventually, we end up exploring every shade of grey in between. This is where I feel the screenplay stands out. Late director Sachy also does a fantastic job in helming this film and I am absolutely gutted that he has passed. To create such a moral confusion in the audience is not easy but he manages to pull it off as you’re made to empathize with both our protagonists. Biju Menon as Ayyappan Nair, a grizzled police officer who is more than what meets the eye is simply brilliant in his role and is perfectly complemented by Prithviraj who plays Koshy Kurien, a war veteran who is the son of a very big political entity. Both the actors are absolutely drenched in their roles and not a single sniff of the actors are traceable. The soundtrack is full of energy and I feel like each song was placed perfectly in the three-hour run-time to make the film well-paced. The only things I was disappointed about were the ending which I felt started off really well and then the ultimate conclusion left a lot to be desired but I understand why they took the decision to end it the way they did. I also felt it got kind of repetitive in the second half and I felt the runtime could have been cut down by about thirty minutes if few scenes which were repeats of old ones were omitted. Otherwise, this film was spectacular and a must-watch for Indian film buffs, especially native Malayalam speakers.