The most anticipated Malayalam film Patriot starring Mohanlal and Mammootty in the lead roles and directed by Mahesh Narayanan, was released in theatres on May 1st and has received mixed responses from audiences and critics.
Since Mohanlal and Mammootty were reunited for this film after 18 years, it carried massive expectations among the audiences since the announcement. Unexpectedly, it turned out to be a disappointment and crashed at the box office.
However, following the disastrous theatrical run, Patriot started streaming on the Zee5 OTT platform on June 5th in five languages such as Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Hindi. People who missed watching it in theatres are now watching it on OTT and sharing their reviews on social media.
Surprisingly, many people have shared decent to average responses for the film. They have suggested that Patriot is a technically solid film with lots of twists and turns. They also claim that although the film wasn’t up to its expectations, it is definitely not a bad film and the director, Mahesh Narayanan, delivered a unique film with the superstars.
Additionally, after watching it on OTT, they feel that the major reason for the theatrical failure of Patriot might be due to its slow-paced screenplay. They suggest that slow-paced thrillers always fail to perform well in theatres, as general audiences always prefer to watch well-packaged commercial entertainers on the big screen, but OTT audiences enjoy watching all types of films, irrespective of the narration style. Therefore, they predict this is the major reason for the contrasting reactions to Patriot from OTT audiences.
Meanwhile, some OTT audiences are also trashing the film, claiming that Mahesh Narayanan failed to deliver a good film despite having an interesting spy thriller plot. They state that Patriot is a very poor film with a bad screenplay and dragged narration.
Ultimately, with the decent responses from the majority of the OTT audiences, it remains to be seen how Patriot is going to perform on the platform and whether it emerges as a successful venture, at least on OTT, in the following days.
