‘Malik’ movie review: Fahadh Faasil drama just stops short of soaring high

Mahesh Narayanan’s multi-layered mass entertainer, with fantastic character arcs and performances, truly makes us miss the big screen

When the end credits of some films roll up, we wonder how little we know about the protagonist, other than probably the person’s external appearance. Malik’s opening sequence, stretched over an uninterrupted ten minutes, exists in a diametrically opposite world, where establishing the character and painting his various hues before the narrative takes off, is paramount. . In those frenetic opening minutes, when Ahammadali Sulaiman (Fahadh Faasil) is preparing to leave for his Hajj pilgrimage, we get hints of his chequered past, the tone of his relationships with his family as well as some powerful people, his stature as a revered and feared leader of the local Muslim population, and finally, his uncertain future. That character sketch is so arresting that we almost don’t pay attention to the fact that the shot was uninterrupted — which is how good cinematography should be — unobtrusive and non-gimmicky.