Divakaran popularly called as Choonda, Kabbadi player Sajikuttan and gorgeous Thamara, who has decided to live an independent life-`Kayam' is all about the life and love of these threesome and some in their boundaries including Muthulskshmi, her parents, and Reghu.
The movie has last year's State Award winner Shwetha Menon as a voluptuous beauty Thamara who is living with mute and unattractive Choonda (Manoj K Jayan). The local baddie Reghu (Anil Murali) was one of the lovers of Thamara, whom she has denied. Now Reghu brings a kaddabi team lead by Sajikuttan to defeat Choonda's team. But very soon the plan proves futile as Saji realises that Choonda is his long lost elder brother Divakaran. After some lame twists, Choodna gets killed and Thamara now yearns for Saji, who was in love with Muthulakshmi.
The highlight of the movie is the placement of the plot in a beautiful village with a magical lakeside. The cinematography by Shyamdutt is top class which is really interesting experience. The tone and settings reminds us of films like `Thazhvaaram' and other Bharathan classics but cliches like the very good protagonist to the ugly, totally bad villain and the village festival etc give an outdated look to the movie. The other highlight is Shwetha Menon, around whom the entire film is woven. She has a strong role written well for her character that she has also delivered in an impressive way. But the low point is again writing which does know flesh up the remaining characters and fails to take off from the enterprising premise.
Director Anil has taken a sharp change of route from his regular humour flicks and tried for a different film but with limited success. Scenarist Viju Ramachandran has delivered classy stuff in some portions but couldn't maintain the tempo in the entire movie. In the acting front Manoj K Jayan has a short role which he does convincingly but some scenes sound over the board. Bala and Anil Murali have given some of the good performances in the movie. Aparna Nair, Chembil Asokan and Seema G Nair are adequate in their roles. The music by Mohan Sithara is also fine.
The movie seems to have a problem with its target audience. As it is marketed with skinny costumes of Shwetha Menon together with the ads of herbal aphrodisiac, serious audience is likely to completely disregard this movie. `Kayam' eventually will thus fall into the category of those movies that arrive without a bang and leave without a cry.
