Michael Movie Review

Sundeep Kishan came to theaters after a long gap. This time he chose a gangster drama, Michael, in the 90s background. The interesting star cast consisting of Gautam Vasudev Menon, Vijay Sethupati, and Varalaxmi Sarath Kumar managed to turn some heads. The trailer is all rustic, violent, and curious. The movie was released today in theaters. Here is the review.

What Is It About?

Michael (Sundeep Kishan) grows up to become an aggressive gangster working under Gurunath (Gautam Vasudev Menon), a don in Mumbai. Michael gets an assignment to kill a person whose daughter is Theera (Divyansha Kaushik). Michael falls in love with her and fails to complete the task. Gurunath and his son Amarnath (Varun Sandesh) come after him. What repercussions Michael had to face, who is he really after, and what happens after form the rest of the story.

Performances

Sundeep Kishan put effort into his appearance but his performance is not on par with the elevations in the movie. He is the only actor in the film with the least number of dialogues and neither his acting fills the vacuum.

Divyansha Kaushik’s role is half-baked and she did just alright. There are many senseless dialogues and acts of her in the movie that shows how poorly her character was written.

Gautam Menon gets a lengthy role and crucial role in the movie and he did it fine. Varun Sandesh does not fit in the role of a spoiled brat and a frustrated son of a don. His dialogues are not intense and his acts completely fail the intent.

Anasuya gets a small but important role. Ayyappa Sharma and others did alright.

Vijay Sethupathi and Varalaxmi Sarathkumar appear in very short roles. Vijay Sethupathi makes his presence felt for a while.

Technicalities

Michael is a gangster story set in the mid-90s. The set work done to depict the retro story is good. There are a ton of action sequences and all of them are almost the same. Michael as a destructive young man beats up as many as fifty goons in no time, which is at times boring.

There are one too many slow-motion shots out of which only some are effective. The visuals are slick and stylish in some scenes. Technically Michael is brilliant. The Background music is good during some of the action scenes like Vijay Sethupathi’s. The cinematography is fine.

The deliberate manipulation of lighting to emphasize the characters often reminds us of KGF.

Thumbs Up

Technical Values

Thumbs Down

Depthless Characters
Old Story
Varun Sandesh
Narration

Analysis

There are umpteen gangster dramas in feature films and web series also. Michael offers nothing new that those films have already shown. In fact, Michael is boring and patience-testing for most of it.

A combative teenager comes in revenge for something and he grows up to become an unstoppable gangster. He works for a don whose son is an arrogant brat who envies this self-made gangster for obvious reasons. The conflict between the two later escalates to a bigger rivalry. This is the story of many old gangster movies and also Michael’s. Except Michael has that stylish makeover for the same vintage underworld supremacy dramas.

Michael’s story is totally predictable. The first half is a pure patience tester with too many elevations that do not entirely match the scenes. Above that, there are prolonged scenes, a love track, a few songs, and artificial emotions.

Michael is indestructible throughout the movie and to show him like that, the director sends a ton of goons to get beaten into a pulp. Knowing Michael’s ability to not get killed so easily, one wonders why the don’s son flaunts his negligence in ‘completely killing’ Michael. Coming to the villains, Varun Sandesh is a total misfit for the role he was given. No matter how cruel and ruthless he wanted to look, his dialogues and acts are nothing but cute.

The second half gives a small hope when Vijay Sethupathi and Varalaxmi Sarathkumar make an entry. They were good for a while, but the dragged episodes dilute their presence also.

The climax, of course, is all revelations on who Michael actually is and why he is doing what he is doing. Some of it could be predicted right in the first half with the scenes that come and go abruptly.

Michael on the whole reminds us of KGF in elevations and style of narration but is miles away from it with the old storyline, weak characterizations, and mismatching elevations. Overall, Michael is the same old predictable gangster drama with a weak narrative.

Bottomline: A Weak Gangster

Rating: 2.25/5

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