King Of Kotha follows the story of a dreaded gangster who rules the crime-infested town of Kotha before leaving his throne behind one day. Yet, the turn of events force him to make a comeback once more in his place of origin. The story here had all the elements for a mouth watering gangster drama that would have accounted for an iconic mass masala entertainer. Yet, the screenplay standing at a daunting runtime of nearly three hours just ends up being mid while not quite rising up to its potential. And yes, the runtime is quite a deterrent here as well!

The drama does open on a phenomenal note with the introduction of a police officer freshly posted in Kotha. Slowly but surely as a part of the world building, he gets acquainted with the people featuring a couple of dreaded gangsters – one ruling the roosts in Kotha while the other lost in oblivion. Thus, begins an extended flashback that lays out all the characters and draws the lines of war for the viewers. One thing that you have to give to the Malayalam Film Industry is their ability to build a world and its characters consistently, film after film. And King Of Kotha isn’t any different. The world building is fascinating also allowing things to simmer in its heat before the eventual explosion. The only issue is that the eventual explosion doesn’t arrive in the manner which I had expected!

The proceedings are interesting to begin with, focusing on the various facets of the life of the gangster. So there is a football rivalry underway between two local gangsters while also a supposed business of drugs underway. The family of the protagonist has abandoned him while he still longs for his little sister. He has a love interest who may or may not reciprocate the kind of love towards him. And there is a track of friendship between the gang members. Each of these tracks had so much potential to form a cerebral kind of a narrative. And this is particularly accentuated in the interval block which was noteworthy in promising an exhilarating second half. But that is where the generic writing set in.

One of the biggest flaws of the writing(and yes, I am doubly critical given that this is a Malayalam film) was that the second hour turned out to be as generic as things can get without exploiting the politics of the area. The entire revenge plot was just too middling for me to care about the proceedings. Even with this track, if things were layered or if the creative decision was to divide the film into chapters just like KGF or Pushpa, things need not have been rushed. The writing could have afforded time towards other tracks which had potential which would have raised the emotional quotient of the film.

Sadly that wasn’t to be considering how the film felt like a collection of events in the second hour that began losing out on its coherence. The events felt repetitive and because enough time wasn’t invested in the emotional track of the film, some of the critical plot points in the film did not evoke the right kind of emotions. Some of the twists and turns are decent including a decently satisfying final act but the buildup to it just made the film dip, and therein lay the issue. 50 odd minutes of brain fade from the writers! Overall, the screenplay here had a promising premise but ended up being middling primarily due to its generic second hour.