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Angamaly Diaries (2017) – English Review

We follow some criminal gangs who all have one thing in common. They are looking to make money, and that will always lead to conflicts. And after an accident, if we can call it that, our dear protagonist must raise a large sum of money. If he cannot raise the money, he will have to serve a long prison sentence.

This is an Indian gangster movie directed by the man behind Jallikattu. A movie I loved. So I was looking forward to watching this gangster movie.

The movie is good, but this isn’t a masterpiece. The first hour feels like a Guy Ritchie movie with a lot of wild energy. But the movie has a big problem. The characters are poorly written. There are a lot of characters here, but almost everyone feels the same, and there are only two that stand out. That’s the two angry gangsters who are pretty crazy.

I didn’t like the protagonist. Almost all of the characters are assholes, so the movie fails to engage when we don’t have a single character we can root for and like. All the characters that are men are assholes. It’s impossible to like any of them. Why should we care about a boring criminal man? He doesn’t do a single thing to deserve our sympathy. What an asshole! That applies to all the people he hangs out with too!

The protagonist is almost hollow, and of course, the movie serves us a boring romantic story that feels forced. This is a man’s world, so they could have kept the women out of the movie. The pace would have been tighter without them, and the runtime shorter. The protagonist is poorly written. He feels like a hollow movie character who has no personality. Who are you, man?

But the movie has energy, and it builds up the most exciting scenes in a good way. The movie score minus the singing is also great. And here comes another problem. The movie could have been 25 minutes shorter because it has pacing issues. There are some longer scenes with singing that kills the whole flow. I enjoyed the second half of the movie, and once the movie has found the right flow, some unnecessary musical elements kill the momentum. This is a big problem with Angamaly Diaries.

Although the movie has a lot of energy in the action scenes, I have to say that I cried over the poor fight choreography. The men fight like women! None of the actors can fight. There’s a lot of chaos and many close-ups when they fight, but none of the actors can fight except for the cool guy who pulls out a nunchak. So the fighting becomes more comical than exciting.

I have seen many gangster movies from different countries throughout my life, and the South Korean gangster movies are the best, in my opinion. Angamaly Diaries has many of the right ingredients, but it’s also held back because it’s too long. The characters are not that interesting to follow as they feel so similar. And the protagonist can rot in hell! I didn’t find a single reason why I should wish this idiot all the best in life.

Rating: 6/10

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