Manjummel Boys (2024) :
Brief Review -
A much-needed survival and rescue thriller for youth. Malayalam cinema has become a brand for content-driven cinema, and in the last 7-8 years, it hasn't been matched by any other cinema industry in India. Survival and rescue thrillers have been made for years in Hollywood, French, and German cinema, some of which include jailbreak thrillers too. Manjummel Boys comes as a new kind of thriller because it is made for the youth and is made from the youth. No unnecessary life trouble drama, no romance, no middle-class issues or blasphemy-just a pure rescue thriller with no other masala elements locked beside it. Recently, Akshay Kumar's "The Great India Rescue" (2023) came and met with a disastrous fate. Why? Because it was stuck to decade-old theories of human drama and impure social conscience. Manjummel Boys does not bother about any such things and gets straight to the point, and that is what's needed from those boys' lives. 40 minutes into the picture, and we still don't know what this film is about. After that, there is the first conflict, and then the entire narrative revolves around only and only that conflict. That's a simple and plain formula for sticking to the main point. Yet, the film takes 15 minutes more than what was needed, and maybe a few songs are responsible for that. To counter that, I believe those songs were needed to set the vibes going for youth, as they are all about friendship. So, maybe some 10 minutes of those haunting frames, dark score, and top views of mountains, caves, and gorges could have been trimmed. Also, the comedy factor, which was making the film very entertaining in the beginning, dies soon after that. That rope sequence was smartly designed. The boys aren't good at it from the start, but when it comes to saving one of them, the same lost-game category suddenly becomes their best weapon. Overall, a nice survival thriller for youth. Half a star extra for the top-class cinematography and nostalgic feel.
RATING - 7/10*
By - #samthebestest.
A much-needed survival and rescue thriller for youth. Malayalam cinema has become a brand for content-driven cinema, and in the last 7-8 years, it hasn't been matched by any other cinema industry in India. Survival and rescue thrillers have been made for years in Hollywood, French, and German cinema, some of which include jailbreak thrillers too. Manjummel Boys comes as a new kind of thriller because it is made for the youth and is made from the youth. No unnecessary life trouble drama, no romance, no middle-class issues or blasphemy-just a pure rescue thriller with no other masala elements locked beside it. Recently, Akshay Kumar's "The Great India Rescue" (2023) came and met with a disastrous fate. Why? Because it was stuck to decade-old theories of human drama and impure social conscience. Manjummel Boys does not bother about any such things and gets straight to the point, and that is what's needed from those boys' lives. 40 minutes into the picture, and we still don't know what this film is about. After that, there is the first conflict, and then the entire narrative revolves around only and only that conflict. That's a simple and plain formula for sticking to the main point. Yet, the film takes 15 minutes more than what was needed, and maybe a few songs are responsible for that. To counter that, I believe those songs were needed to set the vibes going for youth, as they are all about friendship. So, maybe some 10 minutes of those haunting frames, dark score, and top views of mountains, caves, and gorges could have been trimmed. Also, the comedy factor, which was making the film very entertaining in the beginning, dies soon after that. That rope sequence was smartly designed. The boys aren't good at it from the start, but when it comes to saving one of them, the same lost-game category suddenly becomes their best weapon. Overall, a nice survival thriller for youth. Half a star extra for the top-class cinematography and nostalgic feel.
RATING - 7/10*
By - #samthebestest.