'Patriot' Review: Mammootty And Mohanlal Team Up For a Flashy, Tedious Slog

Mammootty and Mohanlal’s long-awaited team-up in Mahesh Narayanan’s 'Patriot' yields a glossy but hollow thriller.

Patriot starring Mammootty and Mohanlal.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

Two titans of cinema team up after aeons in Mahesh Narayanan’s Patriot, which is easily among the most eagerly anticipated Indian films of the year. If Mammootty and Mohanlal are in the same frame, powering the same narrative, crafted by one of our most celebrated filmmakers (Take Off, C U Soon, Malik), and that isn’t a thing to be excited about, I don’t know what is.

It’s also interesting to consider what the term “spectacle” or “event film” means with respect to modern Malayalam cinema, known for producing India’s most refined and boundary-pushing mainstream cinema. It’s often said that hollow spectacle and empty movie star calories alone won’t fly for Malayalam cinema audiences. Even sweeping blockbusters need to be rooted in character and narrative—and offer something substantial, new, and evocative.

Last year’s Lokah, the highest-grossing Malayalam film of 2025, is a shining example of what can be achieved by rooting the superhero genre in local folklore and rich world-building.

All Flash And No Fire

Patriot, on the other hand, tries to be a timely, substantial thriller on the streets and a slick globe-trotting action film in the sheets—except it’s neither here nor there. It’s an all-flash-no-fire flick that ultimately amounts to a tedious three-hour slog. To call it heartbreaking would be an understatement.

If anything, it’s remarkable just how unsticky this film is. I watched it just a few hours ago and, while I technically remember all of it, very little stays etched in your mind.

Perhaps the kindest thing I can say is that Mahesh Narayanan the director has made a fairly slick, good-looking, well-packaged thriller from a simplistic, overlong, and unexciting script by Mahesh Narayanan the writer.

Meet Dr Daniel James (Mammootty), a tech whiz and the government’s head science officer. Daniel is enlisted by top minister Nalini Ramakrishnan (Revathy) to investigate the shady practices and unstoppable rise of crooked fellow minister JP Sundaram, aka JPS (Rajiv Menon), and his business tycoon son, Shakthi Sundaram. Shakthi is played by Fahadh Faasil, seen here as a frantic, barking, one-note villain.

To see a generational talent like Faasil reduced to a two-dimensional baddie in a bloated blockbuster isn’t all that surprising these days. But to see that in a Mahesh Narayanan film is particularly painful, given the pair’s previous work.

Anyway, JPS and his son Shakthi are using a new software called Periscope as a tool of mass surveillance. This includes, but is not limited to, discrediting and maligning women who have accused JPS of sexual harassment, framing and/or assassinating whistleblowers, and rounding up people who speak out against the government.

After Nalini dies under mysterious circumstances, Daniel is on his own and on the run. He flees to London and sets up shop as a YouTuber—a Dhruv Rathee–meets–Edward Snowden–type “vlogger” whistleblower who speaks truth to power, far from the clutches of a government that wants his head.

Fahadh Faasil as Shakti in Patriot.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

The Mohanlal Problem

The first half of Patriot feels like it could have been an email. That is to say, it’s a whole lot of laboured build-up.

We get old-school, espionage-thriller-type beats featuring Daniel walking places fast, constantly looking over his shoulder, crushing phones, flushing SIM cards and pen drives down the toilet, and so on. You get the gist.

The problem is the lack of emotional stakes. The larger picture works well enough—bad guys want to hack into your phone to do bad things; good guys want to stop them. But it’s the dull personal narrative and unexciting characters that are the issue here. We barely feel for these figures.

A flashback in the first half, for example, introduces us to another whistleblower from within Shakthi’s organisation, played by the always delightful Darshana Rajendran. It’s a sequence that should make us care, but it does little more than establish that the bad guys are, in fact, very bad guys.

Similarly, we get lengthy exchanges between characters as a means to movie-splain the horrors of phone hacking to us. These stretches come off as little more than Mahesh Narayanan showing off his research. It’s like watching an article.

Thankfully, post-interval, we get some much-needed star wattage, with Nayanthara entering the chat as a lawyer fighting the good fight. But the real narrative-salvaging force-of-nature is Mohanlal. As retired Colonel Rahim Naik, he’s the best thing on offer here, injecting a much-needed dose of aura and swag.

The problem is, it’s an extended cameo at best. This isn’t the “two-hero,” dual-protagonist film that was promised—far from it. But at least Colonel Naik is introduced as the “muscle” from his very first scene.

By contrast, Daniel is established as an everyman character, not an action hero. A scientist who’s risking his life to expose the bad guys, not a slick super-spy. That’s why a random scuffle at a phone shop early on comes out of the blue, as does a swanky set piece of Daniel fighting off goons whilst aboard a flight, which looks like it was ripped straight from the next generic YRF Spy Universe film.

Suddenly, Patriot ventures into Pathaan territory. Instead, we get a bland action thriller that’s all dressed up with nowhere to go.

(Suchin Mehrotra is a critic and film journalist who covers Indian cinema for a range of publications. He's also the host of The Streaming Show podcast on his own YouTube channel. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)