An official adaptation of the Kannada film Mufti, Pathu Thala follows the story of a cop sent undercover to expose a gangster. Will he be able to survive? The story here isn’t quite novel here but it did have the potential to tick all the boxes for a mass masala entertainer. But the screenplay standing at about 150 minutes is a bit of a mixed bag. One of the main drawbacks of the film is that it is predictable and moves at the same wavelength right throughout.

The drama does open with a thrilling sequence involving the disappearance of the CM. You are introduced to one of the protagonists after a set of random events. But almost at any given point of time, there was some salt missing in the writing although the drama is watchable. I was neither fully distracted nor was I fully invested in the drama. Another huge drawback being that this was touted as a Simbu release. But to make him enter after about an hour was actually a cardinal sin, either from the writing stand point or the marketing stand point. The writing here isn’t sharp in its world building and I feel it was confused on whether it wanted to be a political thriller or a gangster thriller, it ended up being neither.

The proceedings are alright but they seemed to be disjointed events put together in a half-baked screenplay. I really wished the writing had more focus to it because somewhere beneath its layers, there was a story waiting to be told. The flashback scenes did not contribute anything to the drama apart from adding to the length of the screenplay. And the prime idea of a cop being undercover needed that dose of excitement to go with it. But sadly, the drama continued to be flat even in its second hour.

In between, there are moments that are heartwarming and that does give a sense that the drama is grounded and rooted to reality. The grand reveal on what transpired with the CM(with a lame reason) followed by an extravagent action sequence was quite good. But I really wished that there were some solid twists and turns in the screenplay. There was an attempt in a subplot which got resolved almost immediately thus making it a lost opportunity. The end was simplistic too thus summing up the screenplay which was meh, just meh!