Mammootty, Mohanlal and Fahad Faasil starrer Patriot Is An Ambitious Surveillance State Thriller

As they say, its the age of surveillance and data is the new global currency shaping politics, power and control. Directed Mahesh Narayan, the new Malayalam crime thriller Patriot, turns the gaze at 21st century's most insidious bug- illusion of privacy.

The central anxiety of the Mammootty and Mohanlal starrer film is the erosion of privacy in a state of surveillance where consent is biggest contract breached by those in positions of power, namely the corrupt politician (Rajiv Menon), his power-driven son Sakthi (Fahad Faasil) and their IT firm's Pegasus-like spyware application, Periscope.

Introduced in deceptively simple terms in the state, it quickly and deeply penetrates the cybersecure information of governments, civilians and institution with the lethal intension of going global with the application.

However, upon discovering the covert global surveillance network operating through the spyware, Dr. Daniel James (Mammotty), a respected figure and a former intelligence agent must become the whistleblower.

Inspired by the lives of dissidents and whistelblowers, Patriot, follows the whistleblower narrative that hardly escapes the well-worn cliches of cybersecurity thrillers. Spanning locations including Kochi, Delhi, and London, the crime-thriller successfully builds a world of 24-hours surveillance that alludes to George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 and traces the journey of the characters through a Snowden-inspired moments of exposure, paranoia, and fragmented truth-seeking.

However, through several privacy breaches, impending political turmoil, and resulted panopticon-like effect, the 180-minute long film successfully maintains a grip on its narratives, tensions and thematics- better in the second half. Beyond the inconsistencies in making the action-packed scenes fully baked, it finds strength in execution.

One of the film's biggest assets is its performances. Mammootty, Fahad Faasil and Mohanlal justly enact their parts despite the complex nature of their characters that need to find footing within the sprawling 180 minute runtime. Of course, the film leans into the added weight of its casting, bringing together the two superstars—Mammootty and Mohanlal—on screen after 13-year hiatus, reunion that inevitably amplifies its emotional and cinematic pull.

The cinematography as well as the soundscore by composer Sushin Shyam works in tandem to create a sleek, corporate-technological-cum-surveillance world that feels finely cooked crime-thriller.

The film also stars Nayanthara, Revati, Kunchacko Boban, Darshana, and more as the ensemble.