Kayamkulam Kochunni

Rosshan Andrrews's 2018 Malayalam film is about an outlaw who lived in the Travancore region in the nineteenth century. Kochunni entered folk narrative for giving to the poor what he stole from the rich. The film treats that legend together with the caste order. Kochunni's turn to theft is shown not as a personal choice but as the result of a life blocked off; colonial administration and local landowners are parts of the same arrangement. Nivin Pauly leads; Mohanlal plays a legendary thief who guides Kochunni and, despite limited screen time, became the film's most discussed element. The production is large in scale and the fight sequences take wide space. Who it's for: those who like Indian period action films. Who it's not for: viewers expecting historical accuracy; the film takes folk narrative as its base and builds the events freely.