Vishal Menon’s review says Khalifa movie opens with the sharpest part of Prithviraj Sukumaran’s turn as Maamparakkal Aamir Ali: a gold-smuggling origin story that keeps the machinery in view. The film is in cinemas now, and the verdict is blunt — the setup lands, but the payoff does not keep pace.
Maamparakkal Aamir Ali
Prithviraj Sukumaran stars as Maamparakkal Aamir Ali, a man inheriting a family legacy built on crime, and that is where the review finds the film most alive. Menon says the first half works because it breaks down the inner workings of a complicated family business, then shows Aamir devising increasingly clever ways to move gold into India from the Middle East.
The methods are specific enough to carry the film’s early stretch: gold hidden in cattle hooves, coffee jars, and mobile phone batteries. That sequence of concealment gives the story its procedural edge, turning the smuggling route itself into the main attraction rather than leaving the drama to generic action beats.
Fiza and the first half
Menon is less impressed when the film shifts into romance, calling the link between Aamir and Fiza forced and “cute” in the review’s own wording. He says Khalifa would have lost nothing by skipping that thread, and the comment points to a larger problem: every minute away from the smuggling setup seems to drain the film’s most distinctive material.
That is where the review’s best criticism lands. The movie is strongest when it behaves like an origin story for a crime syndicate, but weaker when it starts smoothing over the edges that made the opening work in the first place.
Neil Nitin Mukesh and Shammi Thilakan
The second half, according to the review, slides into oneupmanship between two warring smugglers played by Neil Nitin Mukesh and Shammi Thilakan, yet neither actor registers as a real threat. Menon says Vysakh comes undone in the last hour, which is padded with chases and cameos that feel bolted on rather than earned.
The review even calls out a detour into the desert for a “cool” car chase and a bad guy who drives straight into a trap, but those pieces do not restore momentum. By then, Khalifa has hardened into another mass movie about forgettable bad guys and an even more forgettable revenge motive, with the gold left feeling old instead of newly dangerous.
THR Bottomline
The THR Bottomline reads cleanly: Khalifa is a Prithviraj film with a solid setup and the most utterly generic payoff. That is the useful takeaway for anyone deciding whether to catch it in cinemas now — the film’s sharpest work is front-loaded, and the later stretch offers less reason to stay invested in Aamir’s revenge or the smugglers around him.
