Kasaba is a complete Mammootty show and it is a film for his fans to enjoy. It is a crime thriller that revolves around an inspector who investigates a murder case. The movie was directed by Nithin Renji Panicker and it stars Mammootty in the title role. It also features Neha Saxena, Varalaxmi Sarathkumar, Sampath Raj and Maqbool Salmaan in important roles. It was produced by Alice George and Joby George under the banner of Goodwill Entertainments.
Through Kasaba, debutant director Nithin Renji Panicker revives a genre of cinema that Malayalam cinema seemed to have bid adieu to long ago: a type of film that celebrates perverted machismo and a deformed idea of women’s empowerment. The hero of Kasaba, a CI whose conduct certificate is not all that clean, brags to a lady cop that his male organ is steadier than hers, before manhandling her with peppy background music to go along.
The story then shifts to a village on the Kerala-Karnataka border, where rogue inspector Rajan Zachariah (Mammootty) is sent on a mission to probe a bomb blast case that has left quite a few corpses littering the area. Here, he encounters Kamla (Varalaxmi Sarathkumar), the fiery henchwoman of a clandestine politician lover named Nambiar. He also comes across a posh brothel, which is run by Kamla’s mother (Jagadish).
Mammootty is in top form as he delivers solid punch lines and struts his stuff with panache. The movie is a taut entertainer with remarkable visuals and Rahul Raj’s music is the film’s icing on the cake. However, the movie loses steam after the villains and their intentions are revealed in the second half.
