UTV Motion Pictures marks their entry in Malayalam with Grandmaster, directed by B Unnikrishnan. In the lead role, Mohanlal plays almost his age without much high voltage action sequences and the film turns out to be a pretty engaging one.

Chandrasekharan (Mohanlal) is an IPS officer who lives some kind of a lonely life after being divorced from his wife, Deepthi (Priyamani), a leading criminal lawyer. As the head of the Metro Crime Stopper Cell, Chandrasekharan is entrusted with the investigation of a series of murders.

Kishore (Narain) and Rasheed (Jagathy Sreekumar) assist him in the investigation. The cops soon find that there are some intriguing links that connects the murders and they start tracking the culprits.

The film has a real shaky start with a rather meek first half but things get interesting in the second half. The writer-director has succeeds in keeping the viewers almost clueless about the suspense, until the last moment.

The narration is pretty old fashioned and the lines often sound clichéd, but there are some real nice moments in between.

Grandmaster may have been partly inspired from the Agatha Christie novel The A.B.C. Murders or its movie version The Alphabet Murders (1965), directed by Frank Tashlin with Tony Randall playing the popular Christie detective, Hercule Poirot.

If you start mulling over the storyline and the contents, there is nothing great to rave about, but with slick visuals and good style, the director packages the film in a fast paced manner. The music is pretty fine and goes with the narration.

In a matured style, which has not been seen for a while, Mohanlal shines as the soft-spoken cop. Most of his co-stars including Priyamani, Narain, Jagathy Sreekumar, Anoop Menon and Roma have comparatively limited roles to play, but they have done their parts well.

In the end, Grandmaster easily turns out to be an engaging watch. Watch it, if you appreciate such honest attempts.

Verdict: Good