CIA Review: An enjoyable one time watch

CIA marks the comeback of Amal Neerad after nearly 3 years after his career best movie Iyobinte Pusthakam. Even after having the attire of a mainstream commercial cinema, CIA succeeds in being that wholesome entertainer which works for several disjoint reasons. It is not a movie that has been made to boost a particular party and the main agenda here is a self exploration journey of a young man and in that aspect the film works.  

A young left ideology follower Aji Mathew is the central protagonist of the film. He is living his life here with all the public services and other things. In the midst of all these he falls in love with an NRI girl and the love story gets complicated because of Aji’s backdrop of being a politician. Circumstances forces Aji to go to America to get his love and the movie talks about the risky journey of our hero to get there in a very short span of time and how that journey eventually changes him.

Emigrants are a concept we Malayalies aren’t that familiar with but we have known about it through news and all. Amal Neerad is trying to focus on the issues of emigrants and the reasons why they chose to live that life. This key phase of the film happens in the movie in its second half and the first half of the film is more of typical entertainer with catchy dialogues, heroics and love. The love story by the way needed a better foundation. The film scores without being too loud in the second half when it subtly conveys many things. The screen time of that portion is relatively less, but the impact was kind of impressive.

As an actor Dulquer Salmaan has always shown progress with each film and here also we get to see him perform very effectively. The actor has the charm to be the typical hero and in the American portions, he showcases the sensitive emotions nicely. Karthika Muralidharan’s character has importance, but the role doesn’t have much to use her as an actor. Dileesh Pothan and Soubin Shahir effectively handle the humor. Siddique was impressive as the cool father. John Vijay as the Srilankan was very good. Chandini Sreedharan, Jinu Joseph and Parvathy are there in other prominent roles.

Watch: Comerade in America Trailer

Amal Neerad sort of goes back to his stylizing way of making in the earlier portions of the movie. Slow motion introduction, whistle worthy dialogues, love story and even a dusty fight is there reminding us of the first few films of the director. These ingredients add to the likeability of the movie as a commercial entertainer, but it feels like a misfit when the film enters a totally different second half. The emigrant crisis has been depicted very effectively in this part of the film. We get to see various reasons why emigrants are there. Renadive capture’s the moments very effectively and the cuts were also pretty impressive. Copied or inspired, the music and background score from Gopi Sundar worked in favor of the film.

CIA : Comrade In America is an enjoyable one time watch for various reasons. The imbalance is there due to mixing of commercial elements and the focus on emigrant life. But CIA has released at a time where people should be more aware of the issues surrounding the whole emigrant thing and for that itself it deserves to be watched.