As the credits roll down for Michael, filmmaker Ranjit Jeyakodi lists films like Deewar, Leon The Professional, John Wick, and a few others under the ‘filmography’ category, insinuating that they inspired his craft. After 123-minute runtime, one wonders if the Sundeep Kishan starrer lost its identity as it merely repurposes the age-old recipe of a gangster drama.
While Sundeep is the star of the film, Telugu star Vijay Sethupathi has an extended cameo. The film made in Telugu and Tamil is aimed to be a pan-India project and is dubbed in Hindi, Kannada, and Malayalam.
The story oscillates between different time periods — the 1980s and 1990s — but focuses on the mid-1990s. A young man named Michael (Sundeep Kishan) wants to kill his father and arrives in Mumbai (then called Bombay). He joins a gang run by Gurunath (Gautham Vasudev Menon) and rises up the ranks to become his most trusted ally. In one of his work escapades, Michael falls for a girl named Theera (Divyansha Kaushik), whose father Michael was ordered to kill. At the same time, Gurunath’s son (Varun Sandesh) weaves a plan to kill Michael after becoming envious seeing his father trust a stranger implicitly. From here on, the film is a chain reaction of events that unfold to establish Michael as an inextinguishable gangster. Chances are if you have seen enough gangster movies, you would be able to pen what happens next.
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The first half hardly evokes any strong emotion and is further pulled down by an unnecessarily long romantic sequence, songs, and wobbly screenplay. The second half, on the other hand, offers a ray of hope when Sethupathi and Varalaxmi Sarathkumar enter the scene. While they are impeccable in their performances, the dragged screenplay dims down their presence in the larger picture.
Seeing Sundeep transform into Michael on screen is worth it, considering the efforts he has poured into the physical transformation and the action sequences. Even in the scenes that call upon his emotional gravitas as an actor, Sundeep is able to unearth gold. Menon, as Bombay’s gangster, plays his part well but much like Prakash Raj he does not have a menacing look to appear as deadly as one would have liked him to be.
While the cinematography and background music are top-notch, they can do little to save a sinking ship. When you strip Michael down to the bare bones, the film is a gangster drama possessing no punch which makes it unique.
There are countless moments when the film reminds of blockbuster KGF considering the similar style of narration and powerful dialogues but beyond that Michael is miles away from matching up to the Kannada superhit franchise.
All in all, Sundeep who reinvents himself as an action hero in this period gangster drama has very little going for him. Michael feels like a missed opportunity with nothing new to say.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)