'L2: Empuraan' Movie Review: Mohanlal's Spectacular Mass Moments Lift Up This Otherwise Hollow Sequel  

Director: Prithviraj Sukumaran 

Writer: Murali Gopi
Cast: Mohanlal, Prithviraj, Manju Warrier, Sai Kumar, Tovino Thomas

Language: Malayalam

Love it or hate it, you’ll surely leave Empuraan having discovered newfound respect for Lucifer. Not only does it operate as the perfect first movie, setting up a set of fascinating characters and a complex family equation that organically leads to a series of titles, but it’s also an extremely well-written standalone outing. Despite its complexities, sub-plots and characters, there’s not a single scene one can remove from Lucifer.

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Look at the arc of a character like Govardhan’s, played by Indrajith Sukumaran. Not only is he the narrator in Lucifer, but he is also the film’s conscience, the eccentric chronicler who gives it the added layer of a political satire. He is important to the plot, and he ends up becoming important to Stephen Nedumpally (Mohanlal) as well.

But when you come to Empuraan, what can you say about Govardhan anymore? He is meant to be central to the plot because he’s the one taking care of Asrayam, the orphanage that was being operated by Stephen. Not that this detail adds up to much in this film. So when Govardhan calls for a meeting with Stephen, he is blindfolded and couriered to the US. With the meeting finally giving us no new information expect how grandly Lalettan can pull off a black suede jacket, you feel robbed of this time.

One can remove that scene from the script, and you lose almost nothing. When scale is the only point such scenes are written around, maybe the idea is to not chase narrative sense. It’s as though the entire idea of this film came from the notion that bigger must mean better.

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The same goes with what Empuraan does with Mohanlal's Stephen Nedumpally/ Kureshi Ab’raam character. Despite his power and connections, he came across as a man with a soul, a tragic figure trying to overcome the pain he must have felt right through his childhood as a nobody, as the outsider.

Which is why we felt so strongly in that iconic scene in which Stephen defends the little girl who gets attacked by a police officer (John Vijay). When the officer hurt her, we saw glimpses of the same pain Stephen must have felt all those years ago in the same orphanage. 

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All of this gave him an interiority that made him a fascinating character. There’s so little that was told to us about Stephen, yet there’s so much we feel and so much more we imagine about who he really is. That’s also why the ending was so rewarding when we saw Stephen Nedumpally live his second life as Kureshi Ab’raam. 

But Empuraan chases scale and style and is only interested in showing you what Kureshi Ab’raam can do, rather than who he is. We see him travel between four continents fighting triads from all over the world. The entire world, right from the MI6 to the Interpol, is out to get him, but we do not get a moment in which he’s allowed to live or breath like a regular guy. 

It’s an issue you’re bound to encounter with most big-ticket sequels. From the specificity and the intimacy that we got in the first film, we move into a generic zone where Empuraan doesn’t feel like it’s about anyone or anything. 

It begins five years later, almost towards the end of Jathin Ramdas’ (Tovino Thomas) rule as the CM. We find the entry of a brand of politics that has always been at the gates in Kerala, but even though the setting is ripe with possibilities, there is a convenience with which everything comes together. The character of Jathin Ramdas may have taken a political U-turn, but its larger impact results in a series of scenes that tries too hard to repeat the emotion of the first film. 

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So we get a variation of the scene from Lucifer that ended with the punchline “Ente thantha alla, ninte thantha" (My father is not your father). We also get a repeat of the classic masala moment in which we see a political novice transform into a wily politician with one scene. But most of all, the strongest feeling of déjà vu occurs when a family member turns into the film’s biggest villain. 

While this worked big time when Vivek Oberoi played the evil son-in-law, it doesn't quite create the desired impact in the sequel. Here we find the film trying to divide time between two bad guys and the problematic cause they’re coming together for. Neither of them delivers the same impact with their characters struggling to rise above the level of a generic bad guy.  

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Like skimming through the chapters of a Frederick Forsyth novel, you keep shifting from one mafia gang to another, one country to another, all the while trying to figure how it’s all going to fit into the larger scheme of Kerala’s politics.

You get an answer for this when Empuraan finally prioritises Stephen Nedumpally over Kureshi Ab’raam. A fight scene set right in the middle of a forest begins abruptly, but culminates in a set piece so visually stunning that you finally see what scale can do to such a film. Empuraan comes together a lot better once the drama returns to India, and clicks into place as the politics of the film comes together to tell a story that feels personal to Stephen as well. It feels grounded, real and we get glimpses of the wit and intelligence that made Lucifer so much more than a big, bloated star vehicle. 

But with the narrative spending so much time making an international saviour out of Kureshi Ab’raam, he becomes too invincible to get affected by any earthly event. The result is a film with a series of spectacular mass moments stuck in an otherwise hollow production that’s obsessed with the idea of becoming pan-Indian.