viskies

The violence across the entire show has been pretty intense and the action sequences have been pushing the extent of what's believable or not.

This episode breaks all those barriers. Lale gives birth to her lovechild with Sean while escaping Asif's men. And it is literally that. Rolls down her pants, pushes out her child, pulls out the umbilical cord and all the entrials and then use the umbilical cord to strangle one of the men.

I've seen quite a lot of violence and gore, somehow, this tops everything and it's disgusting.

When everyone has betrayed everyone, characters just respawn and don't die and the storyline has gone waferthin, one resorts to such gimmicks to still engaged the viewer. But this missed that mark by miles and it's time to bring this series to a grinding halt.

When Paatal Lok first appeared in 2020, Jaideep Ahlawat was not so well known. He had a string of movies, he had the arresting personality on screen, but not the heft of popularity.

But the series was brilliant. The storyline, the fleshed out characters, their motivations, quirks and warts, was quite spot on and one very quickly got drawn into the world of Hathiram, his frustrations, his honesty and his limitations. The relationship dynamics between Hathiram and all characters, be it with Hathiram's wife - Gul Panag, or his son, or the folks at the police station was nicely drawn out. Which is why I waited for the reviews to come out before venturing into season 2.

Man was it worth it!

Focusing on the challenges of our North Eastern state which is primarily echoed across many states in India, the politics of development and layered motivations, all come together in two stories, one being investigated by Hathiram and the other by Ansari. And they meet at some point. The character arc this time around was less complex but made space for Jaideep Ahlawat who by now is a Bonafide crowd puller. Now everything he says and does has more expectations and there is a bit of pandering to stardom. This season probably needed 13 episodes as the topic is quite complex and they left many dimensions of the story untouched, for example, the menace of the drug issue in the NE and the devastating impact it is having on the future.

Similarly, the big-city mentality of Indians, where most of the urban class don't give a sh#t about what is happening in smaller towns and cities. There was a lot of material the makers probably dropped on the ideas table, but overall, still one of the best follow ups to the first season.

All characters leave a strong impression. Even someone like the orphaned little boy - Guddu leaves a mark and your heart breaks for the little ones due to choices being made by adults. But the star and center of attraction is Jaideep Ahlawat. As Hathiram, his helplessness of navigating the breureocrasy, expections from his family, watching juniors grow higher and reporting to them and accepting the diversity life has to offer in a matter of factedly manner - you can feel it through every emotion Hathiram goes through.

Great watch, short episodes so one weekend binge should see you through.

Amazing premise, breath-taking visuals and odd ball characters. The movie had all ingredients of becoming an epic.

But the director completely looses the plot in the second half which becomes farsical and tries too hard to to stay irreverent and this is where it completely ravels. Would be interesting to know why two halfs of the video are so different and so badly made.

Mohan Lal could sit and read a book and still make it a compelling watch. Can say the rest of the characters. The worst of all is Danish Sait where his character mashes several of the Mad Max odd-balls and delivers a weird concotion of a lame performance. He is many things and a great comic, but in a period epic, sadly under cooked and over estimated. The women, like most Malayalam movies run by the male genome is for story breaks, meandering relief and don't really add much to the narrative pace.

The Maculay couple - what the hell was that!!!

Everything about the segment was absurd and the movie completely lost the post.

Oh the opportunity of what it could have been!!!