User reviews

It is an adaptation from agatha christies famous book ABC Murders.nothing more

Looking at the big picture, it's a fine movie with a surprising climax at the end. But the movie was just ordinary. B Unnikrishnan had wonderful script and just directed the movie plainly as you would direct any movie. I didn't felt that adrenaline pumping effect on me. The soundtracks was exceptionally good especially the background scores, best for malayalam movies. Kinda sounds like its Hans Zimmer. And at last the villain after being caught comes up and confess all the process.. OMG.. can't we live out of this total concept of confess.. gross!! I'm sick of it. He should have tried something else to reveal the things, not this one. There are a lot better crime thrillers from Malayalam movies. And I don't think grandmaster is one among them standing tall my ratings 6/10 for ordinary direction

After the box office dud The Thriller,B Unnikrishan is back with another police story with Mohanlal,with whom he made his first super hit Madambi back in 2007.This is not a regular police story with firebrand dialogues,3-5 fights and a lukewarm climax.Its a different flick by B Unnikrishnan avoiding the regular police movie Clichés.Finally we get a neat,twisted and Simple thriller that provides some genuine thrills.

The Story resembled the old Malayalam serial Black and white which was my favourite show at that time.Mohanlal plays I.G Chandrasekhar,the head of Metro crime stopper squad who lost his interest in work after his divorce.When Jereme(Riyaz khan) kidnaps 3 girls,He returns with a bang to stop injustice.Later ,Chandrasekhar receives a letter by a mysterious person stating that he wants to play a game.Hence,The movie is a battle of wits between the mysterious killer and Chandrasekhar.Helping him in this task are Kishor(Narein) and Rishi(Jagathy) and his ex-wife Deepthi(Priyamani).The killer kills his victims in the alphabetical order.Who is the Killer, what is his motive and how Chandrashekhar nabs him forms the story of Grandmaster.

Mohanlal puts up an energetic performance which was missing in his last few films.He shines as Chandrashekar who is in the trail of the serial killer.His dialogue delivery and fight scenes were excellent.He doesn't have much long essay dialogues and war of words with his superiors like the regular police stories which is a disappointment for Lal fans.Its a relief for me though.His super cool performance makes the other actors just spectators and it works well for the film too.Narein was decent as the sidekick and Jagathy too did well.Priyamani had an important role as Chandrasekhar's ex-wife and did it without much flaws.Siddhique was cool in a brief role.Roma,Anoop Menon,Babu Antony,Riyaz Khan did their parts comfortably.Others were good.

B Unnikrishnan hit the mark with this one.Great takings, good screenplay,crisp dialogues and good direction that makes the movie engaging till the end.The suspense was good and not predictable as the plot is twisty at times and it was completely different from what I expected.So to say,He was one step ahead of the audience's minds which was not expected,at least by me.He deserves much of the credit for this neat thriller but I felt the movie dragged in the first half.Still this one remains as one of his best works but for me Tiger is way ahead.Though it was directed by Shaji Kailas,it was written by B Unnikrishnan.The Chess playing scenes between hero and the mysterious villain which was repeated many times in the movie was interesting and caught my attention Songs were a big let down considering the music director was Deepak Dev.The first song Akale was better than the rest.BGM was good at times.The running time of the movie could have been cut short.a bit.

All together,Grandmaster lies entirely on Mohanlal.Watch it for the maestro's cool performance and the movie also provides some much required thrills and suspense.The climax gets us by surprise with an unexpected villain.The movie ends up as a decent thriller.In the box office,Film will have a tough time competing with super hits like Mayamohini ,ordinary and all but I hope this one ends up as a winner.

3.5/5 - Good Watch!

Mohanlal's early 90's whodunit "Mukham' directed by Mohan is one of my favorite movies, so is Mohan's "Pakshe". "Mukham" if I remember correctly was a flop, but nuances of the movie keep growing on you on repeated viewing. Though reception of the movie was lilliputian compared to K.Madhu's "CBI diary kurippu", "Mukham" trumps the Mammootty flick by tactfully meshing the two quintessential parts of a whodunit - the crime, and the mind of the investigating officer. B.Unnikrishnan's "Grand Master" does just that, and is a movie worthy of repeated viewing.

When Mohanlal finds a character that resonates with the actor that he is, he delivers sheer onscreen magic. While "Grand Master" doesn't compare to lets say "Bhramaram" (which I think is Mohanlal's role of the decade), there is a sense of calm and ease with which the actor fits into the character of Chandrashekar. Mohanlal plays his age and his physical form, and is completely at ease as he carries the movie. Anoop Menon, Priyamani, Jagathy, and Narain support well, but this is a Mohanlal movie. It's one of those movies like "Udhayananu Tharam" where after the intro scene you forget you are watching a Mohanlal movie. A well played performance which constantly dodges our attempts at getting into the head of Chandra to figure out how he is going to crack the case.

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The screenplay is too slow to handle. But Half hour into the story we get to see that it's a chess game. Thanks to pre climax and climax which were More convincing. there r few scenes in movie which were really good. Okayish Thriller

In one word, a good movie with a good script flavoured by excellent direction by Unnikrishnan and class performance of the great actor Mohanlal.

The movie starts simply and had a simple intro of IG Chandrasekhar. Film takes the track without any lagging and parallelly shows the family background of Chandrasekhar. Unni did the mixing of both well, which satisfies all kind of the viewers.

Looking to the performance, Lalettan was superb as IG Chandrasekhar. Amazing performance by him. Priyamani was good as Adv.Deepthi Chandrasekhar. Narien, Jagathy, Anoop Menon,Babu Antony etc. were good.

B.Unnikrishnan,the craftsman of GrandMaster is deserved to be praised. Good scripting and excellent way of execution. Surely his career best till date. Script shows Unnikrishnan's large habit of reading. Good standard in dialogues and way of presentation. Hats off.

Music department was good. Especially the 'Akalayo ne' song. Also the BGM was good.

Cinematography was an apt one for a movie like this. Good work.

A serial kills women in alphabhetical order and a police go after him... There is no unique way in story and screenplay just an ordinary serial killer movie nothing more than that... Climax has twist but not surprising.. All I can say that this is a one time watchable movie...!!!

If you want to know the meaning of screen presence, just watch this movie. A technically brilliant movie and a commercial script, executed to near perfection, it is all about Mohanlal. Man he just eats up others and he is all over the screen, such dominance and screen presence, this is what real charisma!!! No one other than Mohanlal could have pulled the role of a middle-aged cop who is returning to duty with such élan and magnetism! The riveting climax and decent contribution from the support cast drives the movie home, definitely a must watch for crime thriller lovers and Lalettan fans! A one time worth watching movie that wouldn't disappoint you!

Directly copy from series Agatha Christie's Poirot season 4 episode 1. Very much disappointed.

when a person from kerala thinks of police movies,, what comes to his mind?? a heroic and brave police officer,, who has the capability of beating up 10-15 bad guys at once and who continuously delivers punch dialogues, and mocks and stand up to his seniors who happens to be bad guys. and not to mention senseless action sequences. but grandmaster is an exception to such movies. the hero of the movie does not have super-human abilities and does not deliver punch dialogues throughout. that is the thing i liked most about this movie.

in short, grandmaster is a sensible movie with a good screenplay (not an outstanding one though), which does not insult the viewers' intelligence with the senseless clichés mentioned above.

the casting of this movie is very good. mohanlal did his role as inspector general chandrashekhar brilliantly. the supporting cast was also good.

we can safely say that b unnikrishnan, has matured both as a director and a script writer, and hope he continues to make good movies like these.

Very predictable boring serial killer movie. This is the most boring "suspense" movie i have watched. There is no suspense whatsoever. Just skip it if you don't want to loose your 2 hour 10 minutes.

Good Movie. Everybody acted well in the movie. The movie was not so interesting and thrilling at 1st half. The movie was interesting and thrilling at 2nd half. Good Movie.

For a crime thriller about a serial killer, GRANDMASTER conceives a good premise but the tepid execution plays a huge spoilsport. The film is about the killing of women with the first name of their alphabets sequentially i.e. The first person who gets killed is Alice and the next is Beena and so on. Gradually Chandrasekhar(the investigative officer and the protagonist) establishes a connection between the serial killings with the murder of a wealthy man a few years ago and it's explicitly stated in the film that he had no close relatives. But for the sake of a twist in the climax, a relative is created out of thin air, and that too a pretty close one.

Apart from the poor screenplay, there aren't many redeeming qualities either. The action scenes are very haphazardly shot and have so many cuts that you don't know what the hell is going on. The overall film is shot in such a way that it gives the movie a tv-serial aesthetic. Mohanlal plays his role in a straightforward manner as the writing doesn't give him much. The film just trudges from scene to scene without creating much suspense or excitement. Even the red herrings are poorly done.