A.R.M

The best part of ARM is definitely the portions of the thief Maniyan. Among the three timelines and the three characters, it was the sole reason I felt the movie was worth watching. But even there it felt like there was so much potential that was not explored enough. Even in that portion, everything from the writing, production design and music feels like it's done in a way that is just enough and safe for the movie to work among Malayalees. The main storyline of Ajayan was like a tweaked version of Meeshamadhavan where a lot of things felt wrong and it went on way longer than I had the patience for.

Still, the touch of fantasy in everything was something that made me appreciate the whole thing even with all the things that irked me. The very first action scene with the Kunjikelu character was very underwhelming for me, but the rest of the action scenes worked pretty well with all the Kalari moves. But the fights are not placed in the narrative like modern action movies, it felt a lot like how they were placed in some of the Malayalam movies from the 90s as a moderately exciting scene before something more interesting happens. Even the ending felt like one of those lazy 90s movies where everything doesn't exactly tie up by the end but the main stuff is told directly to you and the rest are just assumed to have gone well.

The 3D effects that are designed to be flashy at moments kept me amused after the moments I felt bored. There were also editing mistakes that popped up here and there, so I'd have to think that some frames with issues in 3D could have been more of an issue with the editing. Overall, this felt like an okayish movie but there were some aspects of it, especially in the Maniyan portion that I'm very happy to see and wish there were more attempts like that.