Dulquer Salmaan’s King of Kotha, a period gangster drama promoted as the first true Pan-India film from the Malayalam industry, has been released. However, the outcome reveals that it remained localized rather than capturing a Pan-India audience.
King of Kotha faces significant challenges from the outset in breaking boundaries. Despite its extremely routine gangster storyline that lacks innovation, the production heavily relied on Dulquer and the rest of the cast.
The team overlooked a fundamental aspect – for a Pan-India target, the film’s runtime should be optimized to resonate with wider audiences. Malayalam films tend to be leisurely paced, and combining this characteristic with King of Kotha, which features a conventional plot bereft of real twists, results in an almost three-hour duration.
While the film excels in technical aspects, offering rich visuals and a superb background score, it harbors numerous reasons why its appeal should have remained local. This serves as a lesson for others venturing to transport ordinary films into different industries.
