 Much of the serious viewers in Mollywood would still remember that more than a decade back, Vijaya Kumar stormed into filmdom with 'Thalasthanam'- a Shaji Kailas movie which rightly mixed campus politics, family sentiments, investigation and action .There after the actor was zeroed in to lesser known character roles, which had the actor in more or less the same type and expressions. ''Sambhu'' is an attempt from the young actor to deliver something different, once again attempting the same game of campus and politics. The movie which is racy enough to engage the viewer, fails to offer anything that is refreshingly new.
The movie has Vijayakumar as Shambu Mahadevan, the son of noted writer and educationalist Shankari Mahadevan. Sambhu and his friends are presently at jail, being convicted of the killing of 14 people by setting a bus ablaze. The film begins with Meera, a leading award winning journalist of a TV channel trying to work out a programme on campus politics. She contacts Sambhu's friends, who admit their part in the killings, but Shambhu is found in a deep demented state, inside the jail.
Meera tracks down Sambhu's past, visits his mother in an agraharam and tries to pitch in the missing links behind the entire plot of the massacre. Meanwhile, she also finds clues about political king maker Adhiseshan and young party leader Parthasarathy, who also had some hidden agendas behinds the happenings.
As with every other film on campus politics, the basic route of narration and plot points remains the same though the scriptwriter T P salim, doesn’t detail each scene to get us too bored.The movie is filmed without glaring errors, but don;t offer any intense sequences , steamy romance , punch lines or quality dialogues .And even some links to the central happenings also seems much illogical .
 Vijayakumar ease through the title role as Shambhu, but doesn't show any potential to hold the entire movie in his not so wide shoulders. And that is too evident from the deserted cinema halls, that seldom invite interests from the group of viewers who are now more interested in lesser films from other languages. Karthika as Meera is good while Babu Antony as Adhiseshan gives another plastic performance. Riyaz Khan' as Partha sarthy is also interesting. The others in the cast including Sindhoory, Rajan P Dev, and Santhosh pale doesn't have much to do in the proceedings, than to appear in their regular self.
G Murali in the editing department has paced up the proceedings but there is some serious error in the grading department that has resulted in highly reddish images throughout the movie. Art direction is also pathetic at times with the amateurish cardboard sets of TV studio that repeatedly appears in the movie. Jassie gift offers some good songs in 'Ponnambiliye Kando' and 'Bomma' that are not visualized with splendor.
Director K B Madhu has attempted the movie in a different make over, but the long time it has rested in the cans shows all over in its clichéd tracks, dialogues and treatment. And that is perhaps the biggest flaw in an otherwise average work.
Bottom-line – It has nothing new to offer and watch the movie only if you have abundant time.
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