Mahesh Narayanan’s Patriot begins with a curious disclaimer: “This film is not against digitalization of India”. For any piece of popular entertainment in India today, it helps to be as vanilla and nonconfrontational as possible, and at least in southern India few things are more popular than a Malayalam film starring Mammootty and Mohanlal, and directed by Mahesh Narayanan. Add to that roster names like Fahadh Faasil, Nayanthara and Kunchacko Boban, and this is a film that comes preloaded with self-marketing torpedoes. The two Ms are coming together after 16 years, and their fortunes over those years create fluctuating waveforms even as they sit comfortably as Malayalam’s biggest stars. Will such a film take the pains to offend popular sensibilities?
It depends. What if the film fashions itself as an espionage thriller that is far away from the zip code of a Dhurandhar? What if it concerns itself with enemies within the state while trying to follow the footsteps of films like Enemy of the State? What if its central piece involves a surveillance software called Periscope that is dangerously close to Pegasus, the Israeli spyware that countries around the world including India have used to surveil journalists and activists? What if the film stages an assassination attempt that strangely mirrors the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 in Istanbul? In the opening scenes we hear a couple of interviewees talk about how they fell victim to the spyware, one a survivor who filed a sexual harassment complaint against minister JP Sundaram (Rajeev Menon) and the other an activist arrested under UAPA Act.
Mammootty plays Daniel James, chief scientist at DRW or Defense Research Wing, who is unofficially recruited by minister Nalini Ramakrishnan (Revathi) to investigate extralegal usage of Periscope on civilians and civilian cases. Meanwhile, Sundaram’s son Shakti (Fahadh Faasil), founder of eponymous tech company, introduces their premier product, a “social evaluator” called Samaj Seva to surveil civilians daily. The Periscope-like behavior of Shakti’s product and Nalini’s shocking death sends Daniel into a paranoid spiral, even as others in the government threaten to name him a dissident under the Official Secrets Act if he acts upon his suspicions. He soon goes rogue and Patriot becomes a cat and mouse game in a country where privacy is a luxury.
For the first couple of hours, Narayanan’s film is a lean film that coasts on Mammootty’s casual charm and body language. Narayanan favours mind games over explosive set pieces, making this film more of a minimalist thriller. It is strongest as it stretches out its stakes, drawing on past connections between Daniel, Sundaram and Shakti. Strangely for a spy thriller, there are no external antagonists, so much that even when the film demands an action sequence to introduce Shakti’s past life as an air force officer, it uses a training module gone rogue. Narayanan understands that the Malayalam stars and cinema’s sensibilities are historically not aligned with those of other Indian language industries. The two M's appeal lies in delivering character sketches, not floating on paper boats made of tiring references, and Narayanan’s writing and design of this film reflects that.
That’s not to say Patriot doesn’t scale theatrical summits. The very muted introduction of the title when Daniel is named as dissident is effective in its own way (he even uses vimathan or dissident for his YouTube channel after his escape to London). While the assassination attempt is played more ‘massy’ than the film’s larger ethos would suggest, Patriot underlines its concerns in other ways. Its main theme of surveillance capitalism and threat to privacy is at once relatable as well as complex.
The film does a graceful balancing act of its dumb and smart registers. When Shakti’s company organizes a tech summit in the Middle East, Narayanan marshals influencers, tech vloggers and young content creators (with Sushin Shyam’s appropriately catchy score) over a quasi-promotional montage. There is hardly any sign of Mammootty or Mohanlal here and it comes off as the film’s strongest and most outlandish segments.
Patriot uses Mohanlal for an extended cameo and gives the meatier chunks of action choreography to him. Cinematographer Manush Nandan and Narayanan ambitiously stage an oner inside a car with Lal and Mammootty, but the charms in this film, which struggles to get to the finish line, are elsewhere. It’s in the Morse code machinations over dying eyes and streetlights. It’s in the easy conversation between Lal and Indrans alleviating a tense moment. It’s in Shakthi and Michael (Kunchacko Boban) squabbling over video conference while working a day job of invading that very technology. It’s in two men named Daniel and Rahim struggling to prove to their country that they are patriots, not anti-nationals.
‘Patriot’ is in theatres.
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