Michael – One of the most cooked recipes, ends up flavourless -

No tale hasn’t been told before, but the beauty of film is how the same story can be delivered in a way that hasn’t been done before while still leaving the audience satisfied. Michael prioritises presentation and style in every way, yet his writing is lacking. This is so evident that the trailer with stunning visuals and presentation fails to impress as a whole movie.

Although Sundeep Kishan and Gautham Vasudev Menon’s portrayals of Michael and Gurunath’s character introductions were engaging, the more well-known plot gradually made even these characters seem trite. With a troubled past and a troubled childhood, Michael teams up with Gurunath, the don of dons. He quickly becomes his pet and much sooner becomes his rival. Except for the fact that Michael saves Gurunath’s life in a life-or-death scenario, the writers seem to have got convinced without giving readers much information about their relationship. The issue with Michael and Theera’s (Played by Divyansha Kaushik) relationship is the same. It is unquestionably not about how intricate it is, but rather how impactful it is on the audience. Despite the twists in the pre intermission, I felt the love story between them was incomplete.

With all due respect to the film’s creators, there are a few situations that make me want to compare it to KGF (Part 1) because they have characters singing the hero’s praises. The key distinction is that the latter was able to support the hero’s buildup with compelling sequences before and after. It is difficult to maintain for a long time when the characters lack personality, especially when they dominate the screen for virtually the whole movie and make it monotonous. With some pretty fine art and costume design, the film’s elegant cinematography by Kiran Koushik was able to depict the timeline on screen. Vijay Sethupathi and Varalaxmi’s cameo was probably the most exciting part (completely in a commercial cinema’s terms) in the predictable second half. The major revealing in the climax is good but yet not a great surprise.

With such high-quality production values, Michael might have stood out from the crowd if the screenplay had received more attention, along with the obvious removal of hero praise.

Even with the best opportunity given, the villains still could not figure out how to kill a hero who is considered the most dangerous threat.