Merry Christmas

A solid start to the new year...

The 144-minute film is steeped in Hitchcockian tones and a 1980s Hindi movie palate (filmed by Madhu Neelakandan). Raghavan leaves little hints and sly clues along the way for the observant viewer to pick up on.

Merry Christmas is beautifully shot, but it fails to up the ante enough for the audience to become fully invested.

For a film whose climax relies so heavily on the performances of its two leads - Katrina Kaif and Vijay Sethupathi - Merry Christmas falls into the chasm between director Sriram Raghavan's ambition and execution.

Merry Christmas, in these final moments, almost stealthily, becomes a moving fairytale about rebirth and redemption.

Raghavan takes his own sweet time to tell the tale of a woman in an unhappy marriage and a man with a mysterious past while also making sure that his characters have abundant time to breathe, talk, and even go for a walk around town.

Merry Christmas is the type of absorbing crime drama where things are not what they always first appear to be. It's a well-acted whodunit mystery that has layers of psychological intrigue presented in stylish filmmaking.

This movie deeply knows the difficulty of living with your choices and how a spur-of-the-moment impulse can shape your entire life. But while it does less well with creating a coherent and believable plot, it does an exceptional job of building a mood.

Merry Christmas...is a crime drama aspiring to be a love saga. It is a slow burn that is intriguing in its first hour, but declines after its big reveal.

20 years since familiarising us with his tailored gore, Sriram Raghavan plunges his hands inside his trove of tales, threatening us with more mayhem. But what comes out is a beating heart. He calls it Merry Christmas.