L2: Empuraan

While it is a movie from lucifer franchise but empuran doesnt meet the expectations and lack of story telling is the major issue. 2nd half is just ok overall beliw average movie. The main positives are the location and casting. Bgm was totally disappointing, and lady characters also doest meet expectations. Story was little lagging. Director failed in making the emotional attachment and the songs also not giving a fresh feel. The major negative is the duration of the movie and over expectations by the filim crew. New technics was brilliantly used and climax is just ok. Overall its not a decent watch one.

Rating - 3.5/5

A socio-political mass action thriller executed with brilliant technicality giving an edge of the seat experience.

The story introduces us to the world of the Alpha lord Khureshi Abr'am who controls the Gold Diamond nexus globally through his dual identity. The story further explores whether this fallen angel will survive his war against the Jihadi groups, International Crime Nexus & Drug cartels from swallowing God's own Country and on how he exert influence on the political landscape of Kerala.

Murali Gopi has scripted the story well enough to accommodate and intertwine the story in the international terrains while being rooted to God's own Country. Prithviraj has excelled in bringing out Mohanlal in the most epic and stylish avatar like never before with slow motion and good BGM's. This can be termed as the best tribute a fanboy director can give to his idol on the reels. Prithviraj has brilliantly portrayed some sequences on screen in a way better than when it is was put into words. The first half stands superior storywise where as the latter half of the movie lost traction and felt like a usual revenge drama towards the end. Topnotch making but the final music felt like a medium to appeal and attract Bollywood audience.

Mohanlal made a subtle performance just by his looks and stance. Abhimanyu Singh,Sukant Goel,Manju Warrier,Nandu,Karthikeya Dev,Eriq Ebouaney,Andrea Tivadar,Jerome Flynn and Kishore made impressive performances.

Exceptional Cinematography by Sujith Vasudev especially the night visuals and wide angle shots in the foreign landscape. Deepak Dev's BGM's in the intro portions were stunning. Hats off to the Production designer Mohandas in precisely putting the director's vision onto the screen.

A larger than life visual marvel in Malayalam pulled off in a grandeur scale with epic performances and top-notch production quality makes it a must watch on big screens.

Rather than concentrating on the narrative and expanding the 'Lucifer' universe, it seems the creators prioritised showcasing the impressive scale and opulence they achieved, particularly striking for an industry that rarely ventured into such lavish and extravagant realms.

This emphasis is evident at frequent intervals, especially when they lead the protagonist to exotic locations, make him do sleek, slo-mo action, all while maintaining an air of sophistication and grandeur.

Now do not get me wrong, I am not opposing the ambition to go grand and embrace flamboyance, particularly when the film's budget allows for such creative freedom. However, that should not compromise the quality of the writing or the development of the characters. When one strips away all the glitz & glamour and assesses the feature purely from a story point of view, shortcomings become apparent.

FYI, I appreciated the original 'Lucifer' for its intent to weave a compelling political thriller, and I was captivated by the character of 'Stephan', I was eager to delve deeper into his story in this continuation.

Even when the trailers for the sequel promised an entirely new experience, I held onto my hopes for something deserving of my wait & anticipation, but unfortunately, none of those were fulfilled, it did not meet my expectations.

I was always skeptical about how good a sequel to Lucifer which goes international can get, and the trailers made me feel like it would be a technically solid but overall okay film, and with that thought this film met my expectations.

The technical side is incredibly done. The ambition behind this film is huge. Switching between international dealings with British intelligence, cartel faceoffs in Africa and the Middle East, the politics in Kerala, and riots in North India, it should still feel like the same movie. In terms of writing, there's so much more to be desired, but the technical side is where they compensate the most. The coloring was well done to make that consistent feel to all of it by giving a larger-than-life cinematic feel which also made some of the actor's skin feel AI-generated but I won't really complain about it considering what they were trying to do. The lighting on the other hand is what worked the best for me. The use of shadows, silhouettes, etc was so pleasing to see but the writing and music didn't step up to make those scenes more impactful.

The movie felt really long, there were a lot of things that felt repeated, some from the previous part and some in this same movie itself. A lot of stuff in the first half just felt very predictable and the stuff that is meant to be intriguing simply felt flat. They really tried to compensate for it firstly by incredible production quality and making, but along with that they also used real-life incidents as well as parallels with so many important political milestones. But the most hilarious attempts were the constant not at all subtle imageries like the "Ls" throughout the movie. There are so many other imageries here that are so on the face that it loses all the intrigue that they were able to create in Lucifer where it was subtle.

I was a bit bored in the first half because of how flat it felt, but the second half was really entertaining to me. Even though it still felt overlong, the action sequences were fun and the build-up to them was also pretty good. Manju Warrier's arc was well done which may be the only character with a proper character arc in this movie, unlike Lucifer. Surprisingly Antony's cameo was damn well too. I can't believe how well he was presented here.

Overall, even though there were so many things that didn't work in this for me and it's not as good as Lucifer which itself wasn't as great to me as it was to a lot of people, this was still fun to watch. The production quality and a few scenes that worked really well, as well as watching Mohanlal and Prithviraj fighting together made this worth it for me.

The Good Great visual treat, fantastic sets, very realistic. Locations are awesome, very good casts from Hollywood, Bollywood and Mollywood. Very few dialogues but still Mohanlal shines.

The Bad Story has a weak and predictable arc, a lot of credit has been given to the writer, yes writers should be given credit, but not this one, not one original idea or plot, just rehash or old tried and tested ones.

The Ugly Loopholes Galore: Shotgun shots produce rifle bullet effects. An unepected jungle running scene has people being picked off my hidden ropes as if its planned. A tree is set fire to, just for effects. Fight sequence go on for too long, you see 7 thugs attacking but during fight scenes 20 of them are being beaten up. Riots is shown completley one sided, and the worst of the riots is put together for people to endure. Why the CM should switch sides when he has won and is already ruling is pointless and not explained at all, its done just to fit the storyline. Small budget films like Kishkindha Kandam, Jaya Jaya Jaya he, Rekhachitram, Officer is executed better.

In an effort to make a pan Indian film Prithvi forgot what made malayalam films good. Hope there is some meat in L3.