How do you review a political film in 2025 without talking about its politics? You only have to read the reviews of L2: Empuraan (Overlord) to master this art.
The Malayalam film has managed to divert attention away from the usual Salman Khan Eid blockbuster largely because of its depiction of the 2002 Gujarat riots. Yet, most Empuraan reviews make no mention of these scenes that have angered Hindutva parties and groups. One reviewer described it as “Malayalam cinema’s most ambitious, but deeply-flawed film”—without once mentioning the scenes depicting Gujarat riots.
It’s not surprising, given that the riots have largely been erased from our media memory and even history.
The globally-released film, directed by Prithviraj Sukumaran and starring Prithviraj and Mohanlal, is the second part of the 2019 hit Lucifer. It is an impassioned appeal to ‘save’ God’s Own Country from a fast-advancing political behemoth with a dangerous playbook. One character warns that mixing politics and religion is like throwing a spark in gunpowder. “This is nonsense,” a character says. “Do you think this is Bihar or Uttar Pradesh?”
Speak up, the film seems to be urging its viewers. “What is yet to come is greater than what has happened,” someone says.
Fire and Blood
The film starts with a CGI-heavy depiction of the Godhra train burning (it reminded me of a James Bond opening sequence), followed by a massacre over many minutes that made me feel very uneasy.
My unease was not because the filmmaker makes us relive a mob lynching in gory detail (rape of a pregnant woman, bludgeoning, stabbing, shooting) but because he takes the riot out of its urban context and suspends it in an old palace-haveli owned by a benevolent upper caste Hindu woman, elevating it almost to a level of spectacle.
The Hindu woman is not spared either for “betraying” her faith, and a character (who later becomes a chief ministerial candidate) stomps on her body quite in the way a police photographer stomped on a Muslim man in Assam after he was shot three years ago.
Mirror Game
Think of Empuraan as the big-budget, cinematic equivalent of Kunal Kamra’s recent YouTube show lampooning the country’s most powerful men. Like in the Kamra show, the word ‘traitor’ makes an appearance here too–though it’s used by the politician in power.
The film is a cautionary tale about the path we are on and a message about communal harmony. It is quite fitting that this bilingual Hindu-Muslim film is an offering from the Malayalam film industry that has made a habit of speaking truth to power.
Audiences may leave the movie theatre with the feeling that in the real world, the Opposition is ill-prepared to fight this battle without the aid of a larger-than-life character like Mohanlal, (I won’t get into his Lucifer-Khureshi Ab'raam nomenclature). His character straddles global action sequences—eliminating rivals in Iraq, ambushing motorcades in Senegal—while restoring the balance of power in Kerala.
Mohanlal rescues everyone, from the main Muslim character to the female lead. After the film’s release, he was forced to rescue himself with an apology to all those offended by the film.
As the controversy around the film blows up—the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s Organiser says it is perpetuating the “anti-Hindu political agenda”—the director has promised 17 cuts. I watched the uncut film that was running in theatres on Eid weekend.
Gujarat may be angry now, but the film was shot on location there, too, and there’s a thank you credit to the state’s tourism board. One producer has insisted, “We are not involved in any politics.” Meanwhile, Kerala Chief Minister Pinayari Vijayan has defended the film, affirming the right to creative freedom in a democracy. As a politician in the film says, “Under the guise of democracy, we are still ruled by kings.” And, since this is an Indian controversy, the director’s mother has defended her son.
My favourite response has been that of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state president Rajeev Chandrasekar, who said that he was planning to watch the movie until he realised “Mohanlal himself had problems with his movie.“ Why should I buy a ticket and popcorn to watch it, he asked. However, moviegoers seemed to have had no such problem; by day five, the filmed logged Rs 70 crore at the box-office.
Sure, what the reviews say is true. The film flits across the world with breathtaking speed, its narrative arc is dodgy, and phrases like “dark web,” “deep state,” and “God axis” are thrown around freely as characters march around with 12 bore shotguns. At one point, a character actually receives “deeply classified, top level, heavily encrypted” information. But forget all that; everything in the film reminds you of the dramatic remaking of India in the last decade.
What’s Reel And Real
The film presents two dominant political parties, reflecting Kerala’s real-world landscape. There are references to parties that have become monarchies, a critique of dynasty politics, and a sermon about how those who carry forward the dynasty should respect the ideologies their forefathers stood for.
‘Don’t sell out to the right’ is a message that’s relevant to dynasts from varied political backgrounds across the country. Another message to political parties? Don’t bargain away tomorrow for a reward you might receive today.
One of my favourite scenes is when the leaders of the state’s two rival political parties have tea by the side of a swimming pool, and one of them describes it as a “summit between the clueless and the hopeless.” The audience, however, reserves its loudest cheers for a forest fight sequence where Mohanlal cracks his shoulder, pulls up his mundu, and takes down the bad guys. The real hero here may be writer Murali Gopy.
A central relationship in the film—between a brother and sister played by Tovino Thomas and Manju Warrier—has many parallels to siblings Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadhra. The uneasiness that exists between them; a reference to how Rahul, as clean cut here as he is in real life, disappears on trips before key events; how he doesn’t share what’s going on in his mind; and the resuscitating power of Priyanka’s speeches.
“Nobody wants any religious harmony, including our father,” the brother tells his sister, whose name is Priya. He doesn’t brandish the Constitution, but he does gaze moodily at a statue of the Buddha.
The Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) Act is used against an Opposition politician; there is a joke about Hindi dominance, another about the home minister, and an observation about our skin colour obsession. Gopy doesn’t bother slamming the lowest hanging fruit—the media. There’s only one ineffectual, fence-sitting TV channel here: NPTV.
Prithviraj plays Zayed Masood, a survivor of the riots (a newspaper headline in the film announces: It’s a Pogrom!). He seeks vengeance against Balraj Patel or Baba Bajrangi—the man responsible for murdering multiple members of his family, a man who announces he doesn’t like the colour green. It’s a clear depiction of the Gujarat Riots accused Babu Bajrangi, who led a mob to a massacre in the 2002 riots. But the real Bajrangi never got made over into a nicely dressed politician. One could argue that the filmmaker uses this character as a placeholder for a more powerful person.
In the climax, Masood dons a black Pathan suit (a nod to Salman Khan’s favourite outfit) as he teams up with Mohanlal to avenge his family’s massacre two decades later.
Forgiveness, the film suggests, is for gods. Humans need vengeance.
At a time when many films are finding it impossible to breast the censor board’s finish line, Empuraan offers a free-spirited critique of all the country’s political parties.
In a sense, it has ignored the fact that the only films that seem to have access to creative freedom in recent times are the ones that promote the Hindutva agenda. It’s a filmmaker’s last stand on an issue that has concerned many southern political parties in recent years—the advance of the Bharatiya Janata Party into their states.
(The author is the founder of India Love Project and on the editorial board of Article 14. This is an opinion piece. All views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)