King of Kotha – A Mediocre Cliche drama! New Film Review 2023
King of Kotha (KOK) is a Malayalam film directed by Abhilash Joshy released on 24th August 2023. King of Kotha was the most awaited film of Dulquer Salman in 2023. Other than Dulquer, the film’s cast includes Gokul Suresh, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Anikha Surendran, Shabeer Kallarakal, Nyla Usha etc. Even though the film has got huge promotions in Pan-Indian level, from a personal perspective, we did not find the film to be an upstanding one.
King of Kotha describes the criminally active city of Kotha, including its past Kingpin Raju and current Kingpin Kannan Bhai. The movie features a lot of brutal violence, which might not be enjoyable to sensitive viewers. The movie comes under the mass-action crime drama genre. Drug abuse, another major social issue is also entitled in this movie. Though the film had small twists and turns, it did not had much effect on the movie. The cast also bestowed a tolerable performance.
The major positive of the movie is Jakes Bejoy’s BGM and Nimish Ravi’s Cinematography. We felt that the nature of each scenes were better portrayed by the background scores rather than the script. Nimish ravi has also shown marvellous camera skills in this movie, especially during the climax scenes. Dulquer’s screen presence was also remarkable. The art department were also fruitful in creating a 90’s crime – ridden city of Kotha.
Lack of a strong story and proper screenplay were the primary negatives in the movie. The dialogues, which are very much crucial in a film of this genre, failed to create any impact. Sometimes even the dialogue delivery were also disappointing. Unlike most of other debutant directors, Abhilash Joshy was unsuccessful in creating an impact as a director in the mollywood film industry. Editing is also not up to the mark.
King of Kotha, made clear that Dulquer is not suited for this type of gangster drama. Artificiality in dialouges were clear in each scene. Mass scenes also did not create a so called ‘goosebump’ effect in theatres. The characterization of both hero and villain were also abominable. There was nothing new in the story line and most scenes were predictable. The lengthy duration of the movie was another serious drawback. The unneccessary lagging of the story was seen clearly in both halves.
On the whole, King of Kotha is a movie that is more passable in terms of technical aspects than in terms of screenplay aspects. According to us, it does not demand a must watch theatre experience.
IMDb – 6.3/10
India Today – 2.5/5
Our Rating – 2.5/5