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One Movie Review : The portrait of a too-good-to-be-true CM

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Sagar S Krishna murthy 1060 days ago

A good family entertainer. A good watch

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Led by The Rock, the entire ensemble delivers ample servings of naughty and nice that may leave you humming, “Oh what fun it is to ride in a Red One open sleigh.”

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One review: Mammootty’s political drama is pleasant despite its problems

One movie review: despite its several follies, mammootty's one is a pleasant movie to watch. it feels good for a change when a powerful person uses his power to help the weak and fix problems of the poor with a single swing of his pen..

One movie star cast : Mammootty, Murali Gopy, Joju George, Siddique, Mathew Thomas One movie director : Santhosh Viswanath One movie ratings : 2.5 star

One of the upsides of watching a movie on a streaming service from the comfort and safety of our home is that we become a tad bit more accommodative than we usually are. We are a bit more forgiving and tolerant towards the film, given that we didn’t have to go through a lot of trouble of going to a theatre to watch it. The one question that bugs the minds of most movie patrons is whether the film is worth their effort, money and time? Now, when we discount the first two parameters of this movie-going conundrum, we are more likely to appreciate even a mediocre movie as opposed to completely hating it.

Take, for instance, Mammootty ’s latest film, One, which started streaming on Netflix on Tuesday. The film’s marketing promised us some sort of a political extravaganza, but what we were served instead were the good intentions of the filmmaker. Having watched this film without much trouble at home, I can appreciate the messaging without complaining about how this film is such a wasted opportunity.

Kadakkal Chandran, played by Mammootty, belongs to a low caste. After dedicating more than 37 years of his life to politics, he is still untouched by the vices of his profession. He doesn’t seek power for its own sake and is not greedy. He is an idealistic man, who knows where he comes from and where he’s going. He is also secure enough to understand the dynamics of society. He, for instance, doesn’t put a student who asks him to give him a haircut in jail. The student in question meant that comment as an insult to the Chief Minister for being the son of a barber. In fact, many seasoned politicians cannot digest the fact that a barber’s son holds the Chief Minister’s Office in Kerala. But, Chandran wears his history and his family legacy as armour, which saves him from tripping on his own ego.

There is a lot of political awareness in the writing of screenwriter duo Bobby and Sanjay. The film immediately acknowledges that politics is the last resort of the scoundrels but at the same time, it also refuses to be completely cynical. Going by the film, all it takes is a single self-destructive politician to ignite the fuse of progressive reform.

Read in Malayalam .

And Bobby and Sanjay want us to see the ironies in the state’s politics. In Kerala where communist ideology rules, people can’t stand a son of a proletarian becoming a chief minister. The filmmakers also want us to see the state’s obsession with hartal, and how disadvantages of frequent strikes outweigh the advantages. It also emphasises on the fact that every political party has a few honest members who want to bring about a change in the country. It also highlights the need for a leader to cut the umbilical cord with his political party once he takes the oath of a public office. In other words, the separation of church and state. The picturization of director Santhosh Viswanath, however, doesn’t do justice to the keen observations of Bobby-Sanjay. Or Bobby-Sanjay deliberately sabotaged their script to accommodate hero-worshipping? It is hard to say.

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For one, there are long build-ups to obvious outcomes and at times it gets preachy. Also, what’s up with Kadakkal Chandran’s head injury and his trouble with memory? Only Bobby-Sanjay and Santhosh Viswanath could tell us why they did not follow through with that sub-plot.

Despite its several follies, One is a pleasant movie to watch. It feels good for a change when a powerful person uses his power to help the weak and fix problems of the poor with a single swing of his pen.

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One Movie Review - One is an undemanding watch that works despite being too simplistic!

Published date : 07/may/2021.

One is an undemanding watch that works despite being too simplistic!

Bharath Vijayakumar

It is not until 30 minutes into the film that you get to see Kadakkal Chandran (Mammooty), the protagonist, make an entry on screen. The build up to this scene is superb and this initial half hour isn't just about hyping up the tension for the entry of the hero. It is also very much in sync with the theme of the film - the power (or the lack of it) of the common man in a democracy. Like Mudhalvan (Tamil) and Bharath Ana Nenu (Telugu), One is also about a chief minister who is trying to clean up the system. But unlike them, the hero here isn't someone who has to fight henchmen to become the savior of the masses. Make no mistake, One is also a star driven and hero worshipping vehicle with the mandatory slo-mo walk accompanied by a trademark BGM. But the heroism here has more to do with the position of power that the protagonist occupies than the star himself.

What works both for and against the film is that it keeps it simple. It works more like an easy watch with good moments sprinkled across. If you are looking for an intense political drama with a certain tension as to how the hero is going to overcome the odds, One isn't that kind of a film. While the core idea is about the 'right to recall' the elected representatives, the narration isn't focussed on this point until the last leg of the film. The film primarily focusses on the kind of challenges that our protagonist faces on a regular basis. We get to see Kadakkal Chandran's relationship with his sister, his equation with his long time friend cum colleague cum leader of the party (Joju George as Baby) and other such facets of his routine. These facets aren't explored fully and that really isn't an issue. But I wonder if the impact would have been higher had we known how Kadakkal Chandran got to this position? We do get dialogues about his past and even a mention about how he became an overnight success. But given that he (and maybe Baby) is possibly the lone corrupt free politician in his own party, how did he manage to occupy the position that he is in. How did the others let him climb up? Well, that could be another story and he possibly did compromise to get up there so that he could wield his power to set things right. But such questions do remain. Also, the angle of memory loss doesn't contribute to the main plot (unless that was some reference related to Kerala politics that I am not aware of).

Your reaction to the film is bound to be similar to that one guy who remains neutral during the passing of the bill in the climax. 'One' is a decent outing with few highs. But being accustomed to an overdose of masala in films of this genre from Tamil and Telugu, I found 'One' to be rather pleasant!

Rating:2.75/5

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You’ve probably seen the viral video. An elderly British man named Nicholas Winton sits in the front row of a television studio watching a silly chat show called, “That’s Life.” The host explains to the viewers that more than 40 years earlier, just before World War II, as the Nazis were invading Czechoslovakia, Winton arranged for the rescue of hundreds of children from Prague. The story had never been publicly told and none of the children knew who had arranged their transportation and found them foster homes in the UK. The host then revealed that the woman sitting next to Winton was one of those children. And in a second “That’s Life” broadcast, where Winton expected to meet two more of the now-grown children, it turned out that every member of the studio audience was one of those he had rescued.

That extraordinary story is now the subject of a less-than-extraordinary film that is nevertheless heartwarming, its theme of the difference a single person can make reflected in the title, “One Life.” Winton is played in the 1980s by Anthony Hopkins and in the flashbacks to the late 1930s by Johnny Flynn . 

Winton was born two years after his German parents immigrated to the UK in 1907. At that time their name was Wertheim, Anglicized to Winton as the prospect of a second world war made the family want to be seen as fully British as they felt. They had converted from Judaism and Winton was baptized, though, as he explains to a Czech rabbi suspicious of his reasons for requesting the names of the displaced children, he considers himself an agnostic and, surprisingly for someone working as a stockbroker, a socialist.

“Everyone in Prague is trying to get out,” Winton’s mother (Helena Bonham Carter) says dryly. “My son is trying to get in.” Germany had “annexed” the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia and only the European politicians thought he was going to stop there. Refugees were living in the direst conditions in Prague. The Kindertransport trains rescuing refugee children were only allowed from Germany and Austria, not Czechoslovakia.

A few exhausted British citizens in Prague were trying to help, but their priority was activists who would be the first to be arrested if the Nazis arrived. Winton’s priority was the children. There were thousands of children and innumerable obstacles. Locals and refugees were not willing to share their information for fear the Nazis would get them, by force or betrayal. There was a lot of bureaucratic red tape in the UK and the countries the children would have to go through and the need for £50 (about $10,000 today) and a willing foster home for each of them before they would be allowed into the country. And there was no time. With the help of his very persuasive mother, some friends in the UK and Prague, and endless hours of pasting the children’s photos on the visas, they were able to bring eight trains filled with more than 600 children to England. The ninth train, scheduled to leave the day the war was declared, was stopped by the Nazis. 

As the older Winton tries, at his wife’s urging, to go through the towering piles of paper in his home office, he thinks back on his life. He is overcome with the thoughts of the children he could not save. He shyly brings his scrapbook of the rescue operation to the local newspaper, but the editor says there is no local angle. And then he brings it to Betsy Maxwell ( Marthe Keller ), the French wife of media mogul, financier, Czech refugee, and perpetrator of a massive fraud Robert Maxwell (they were also the parents of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, but that would be another movie). Finally there is someone who recognizes its importance.

The flashback scenes are not as compelling as they try to be. The Hopkins scenes are more engaging, not just because we look forward to the re-enactment of the television reveal, but because the film is sharper at addressing the existential issues of purpose and meaning than it is in showing us the difficulties in rescuing the children. The metaphor of his pool (immersing, draining as it is covered with fallen leaves, filling it again) is unnecessarily heavy-handed. When Winton sees the children he saved, grown up and apparently flourishing, it helps him make sense of his life and tells us everything we need.

Nell Minow is the Contributing Editor at RogerEbert.com.

• Anthony Hopkins as Nicholas Winton
• Johnny Flynn as Nicholas Winton (young)
• Helena Bonham-Carter as Babi Winton
• Jonathan Pryce as Martin Blake
• Romola Garai as Doreen Warriner
• Alex Sharp as Trevor
• Lena Olin as Grete Winton
• Samantha Spiro as Esther Rantzen
• James Hawes
• Lucinda Coxon

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Home » Reviews » Malayalam Movie Reviews

One Movie Review: Mammootty Brings His A-Game In This Too Good To Be True Film

Mammootty is amazing but that isn’t enough to make a film brilliant in totality..

Star Cast: Mammootty, Murali Gopy, Joju George, Salim Kumar, Mathew Thomas, Nimisha Sajayan, Madhu

Director: Santhosh Vishwanath

What’s Good: Mammootty enters the frame and lives the life of bipolarity through a character that has lost himself to help his people.

What’s Bad: The film relies too much on the superstar and doesn’t really become a strong voice or representation that we expect from a politically sound social drama.

Loo Break: every time the DOP decides to take a slow-motion shot of Mammootty , RUN!

Watch or Not?: if you are still stuck in ‘too good to be true’ films and a Mammootty fan, why are you even here? Go watch. Others don’t go in expecting you are going to get the reality. It’s a template of how we want our Chief Minister(s) to be. Anil Kapoor did that back in 2001, 20 years ago. Just a lesser sanitised version, maybe.

One can be simply described as Mammootty explaining to the world what CMs are supposed to do. But I will be more creative, don’t worry. Kadakkal Chandran, CM of Kerala, is a person everyone unanimously dreads. Ones who have met him and even the ones who have just heard his name. But who is he? Is he that cruel? Does democracy mean anything to him? Why the fear? Everything is dissected when a boy and his friend dare to call him out after he is assaulted by the CM’s security guard at a hospital the boy’s father is admitted in.

One Movie Review: Script Analysis

The last three films I got the watch are The Priest , Wild Dog and One. A thing that is common between all the above is the presence of a mass superstar; two even have the same. While The Priest was successful in putting the story above the star, Wild Dog was halfway there. Sad to report, One fails in that department, but Mammootty saves the day. More about that later.

My intrigue was upped by many levels when I read Bobby and Sanjay have penned One. Not to forget, these are the same guys who have shaped films like Uyare and Mumbai Police (if you haven’t, go for them before you watch One). The writers are known for tackling social stigmas and issues through their narratives respectfully. Remember how Mumbai Police focused on the LGBTQ community (don’t come at me calling it a spoiler. The film is ancient now).

With One, they try to do the same. They talk about the fact how the citizens are dreadful of the chair regardless of the fact of how the person sitting on it is. With that, they also focus on how a Chief Minister is supposed to be. What creates ideologies, and how to follow them and sow their seeds. For the first half an hour, it is just the build-up to meeting the man who sums it up all.

These 30 minutes, in my opinion, are closest to reality, and thus relatable to the max. A young boy Sanal, after his father is admitted to the hospital due to an inhumane incident, is manhandled by the cops outside the hospital because the CM is inside. That creates a whirlpool inside him, and when a friend triggers it, he decides to call that out through a social media post.

The post goes viral, and the opposition to the CM begin juicing out the situation. The ruling party is looking for the boy, who is running away thinking that the CM will kill him. Now, this was a fertile ground to showcase how rebels are created. The relation between the youth and the politics. Veteran politicians prepping up the youth. And Sanjay and Bobby too try and show all of that, but sadly fall prey to the command of overshadowing it all with Mammootty’s magnum presence.

What we instead get is a half baked look at a CM trying to get rid of the evils in the system, and incorporating the people in the system. The idea of giving power in those hands who elect the king is ideal in creating a social drama that will speak to the masses. But if your constant gaze is on how your antagonist walks in slow-motion, while you zoom in towards his shining shoes, writers can’t do much.

My interest forever was with the dynamic the Sanal and the CM shared. It seemed like a man is preparing his prodigy. Whenever youth and politics meet, it has to be fresh, because it is. Remember Mani Ratnam’s Yuva, not an exact example, but that is what I was hoping for. But the makers completely forget the angle for long chunks, and all Sanal gets to do by the end is stand and clap at a speech that Kadakkal has given. Wow inspired!

One Movie Review: Star Performance

I have indeed criticised the slow-motion shots, and too much focus on Mammootty, but that doesn’t take away anything from the fact that the superstar has kept his best foot forward. The actor plays a politician who has almost no family to lose. He is not just an image of a democratic leader to the world, but actually a democratic man in real life. His orders are not brutal commands but requests.

Though he gets no backstory, but you can see where he has come from. Mammootty lives the bipolarity of his character. You see it clearly when he forgets his signature. There is a battle within a battle, and with his calm face, he aces every minute of playing the part.

Mathew Thomas gets to play the boy Sanal. In the first few minutes he is given a breakdown scene and he proves to have calibre. The actor manages to embody the character and impress. And I will say that again, I wish he would have been explored more.

The Great Indian Kitchen actor Nimisha Sajayan gets an inconsequential cameo. Joju George and Madhu do what they know best.

One Movie Review: Direction, Music

Santhosh Vishwanath takes the director’s chair and heads the film in directions far away from each other. The first hour is completely different from the next, and the climax conflict can be an entirely different film. Good that he is backed by some amazing actors, or the chinks would have shined brighter.

What kills the mood is the sanitisation of it all. Now the production design team is also to be blamed. For a film that talks about politics of the real world, there are no names, no mentions. Not even fictional flags to differentiate between the organisations. Everything becomes too vanilla, and we know that isn’t true at all.

Background score is grand and helpful to the fabric of the film.

One Movie Review: The Last Word

One is an honest attempt to telling the world how it is supposed to be, but a bit too sanitised. Mammootty is amazing but that isn’t enough to make a film brilliant in totality.

One Trailer

One releases on 27th April, 2021.

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Lily Collias brings a nearly wordless intensity as Sam in Good One. Smudge Films hide caption

Too often, the month of August is regarded as a fallow period for moviegoing, after the big blockbusters of the summer but before the awards contenders of the fall. But the aptly titled new movie Good One is a reminder that there are always smart, interesting films being released, if you’re willing to look beyond the obvious. As it turns out, looking beyond the obvious is something that the writer-director India Donaldson has a real knack for. In just 90 minutes, she tells a three-character story that appears simple enough on the surface, yet it’s so sharp and engrossing that you might not immediately notice the deeper story taking shape underneath.

Lily Collias plays 17-year-old Sam, who’s going backpacking in the Catskills with her father, Chris — that’s the terrific James Le Gros in a too-rare leading role. They’re supposed to be joined by Chris’ oldest friend, Matt, and his teenage son, Dylan. But Matt winds up being the only one to come along; he and Dylan’s mom are recently divorced, and Dylan isn’t taking it well.

Chris himself has been divorced for a while, and he and Sam have a pretty harmonious relationship by comparison. They seem to get along even when they’re bickering, as happens when Chris criticizes Sam’s driving.

Much of the movie consists of Sam listening quietly as Chris and Matt go on and on, reminiscing about old times yet always finding new things to grouse about. Chris, a savvy outdoorsman, can’t stop complaining about how badly Matt has overpacked for a three-day hiking trip.

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While the two men rarely ask Sam how she’s doing or feeling, they seem cool enough where it counts. Chris has long been supportive of his daughter’s queer identity; she has a girlfriend whom she texts during the trip, whenever she can get a cellphone signal. Matt tells Sam that she’s wise beyond her years: Unlike all the other reckless, rebellious teenagers out there, she’s a rare “good one” in his book.

Scene by scene, however, writer-director Donaldson paints a subtler picture of the dynamics at work. At times Good One reminded me of Kelly Reichardt ’s quietly perceptive 2006 drama, Old Joy , which also squeezed a lot of emotional history into a fateful camping trip.

You get the sense that Sam has traveled a bunch with her dad and Matt before, and that she’s long adjusted to her designated role. When the three of them share a motel room on their way up to the Catskills, it’s Sam who instinctively rolls out her sleeping bag, without even being asked, leaving the two beds to the men. And once they reach their campsite, it’s Sam who cooks dinner for the three of them without complaint. The dynamics are complicated. Beneath the men’s easygoing manner, there’s an unmistakable air of condescension toward Sam, a sense that their appreciation of her is more conditional than genuine.

If Sam resents them for any of this, she doesn’t show it, at least not at first. Collias gives a beautifully understated performance; with very little effort, she can register everything from wry affection to barely concealed exasperation. And Donaldson, working with the cinematographer Wilson Cameron, proves as keenly observant as her protagonist. She’s alive to the beauty of the mountains, whether it’s the sight of a majestic canyon or the sound of rushing water. Some of the movie’s slow-simmering tension arises from your uncertainty about what might be lurking nearby, whether it’s a bear in search of food or three young men they cross paths with on the hiking trail.

But Good One isn’t one of those movies in which a journey into the wilderness spirals into horror. The dangers that Donaldson introduces are of a more intimate and perhaps more insidious nature. There comes a moment in the story when everything changes, and it’s at once surprising and unsurprising, all too believable and, in the moment, perhaps a little contrived.

But that hardly matters. What matters is how Sam responds to this sudden shift, and Collias shows her unpacking that response almost in real time, and with a nearly wordless intensity. Good One has the concision of a sharply etched short story, but what happens by the end can’t be easily summed up. Sam won’t soon forget the lessons of this particular trip, and neither will we.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Story of Kadakkal Chandran, the Chief Minister of Kerala whose uncompromising attitude towards corruption and his dictatorial actions have gained him a lot of enemies. The events get more in... Read all Story of Kadakkal Chandran, the Chief Minister of Kerala whose uncompromising attitude towards corruption and his dictatorial actions have gained him a lot of enemies. The events get more intense when he faces an allegation. Story of Kadakkal Chandran, the Chief Minister of Kerala whose uncompromising attitude towards corruption and his dictatorial actions have gained him a lot of enemies. The events get more intense when he faces an allegation.

• Santhosh Viswanath
• Bobby Sanjay
• Joju George
• Murali Gopy
• 47 User reviews
• 4 Critic reviews
• 1 nomination

Top cast 98

• Kadakkal Chandran

• Marampally Jayanandhan (Opposition Leader)

• Lathika Satheesh

• Vijaya Mohan (Advocate General)
• (as Ranjith Balakrishnan)

• N. Shamsudeen (Chief Secretary)

• K.C. Jayakumar (Speaker)

• P. Sugunan MLA (Opposition)

• Councillor Noorudheen

• Dinesh Rajan MP
• Kerala Governor
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia One of the screenwriters Sanjay said the name 'Chandran' was considered for the character from the very beginning. But the power of the character has doubled with the addition of the place name Kadakkal to Chandran. Prior to the name, Kadakkal is very attractive also. The idea struck him when he went through this place several times. When the screenwriters thought of such a background, they came up with the idea of why Chandran could not be a Kollam district resident. That's it. Each region has its own politics. That is the politics of Chandran. Chandran got that majesty when the name of the place was added to the name of the leader and it was when Kadakkal came along.
• Soundtracks Janamanassin Adhipadi Nee Written by Rafeeq Ahammed Produced by Gopi Sundar Performed by Shankar Mahadevan

User reviews 47

Good idea with bad writing.

• yashwanthk-28132
• Apr 27, 2021
• How long is One? Powered by Alexa
• March 26, 2021 (India)
• Official Netflix
• Official Facebook
• Ichais Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• ₹11 (estimated)
• Runtime 2 hours 31 minutes

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