KAAM 25 (2026): Vineeth Sreenivasan’s Craft Betrayed by Thin Screenplay
Noble Babu Thomas, who also wrote this film, plays Dev Mahendran, a character whose name carries the weight of a layered family conflict, set against an international backdrop that Malayalam cinema rarely attempts. The casting of Ivan Vukomanovic as André Nicola and Audrey Miriam Henest as Sana Abdullah signals a film that is genuinely reaching outward, toward a grittier, more globalised register.
Vineeth Sreenivasan directing an action thriller is itself a tonal pivot worth examining. He has built his reputation on intimate, emotionally calibrated storytelling, which makes Karam an interesting gamble, one that the box office ultimately returned as a loss.
Noble Babu Thomas Carries the Weight of Both Pen and Screen
Thomas occupies a peculiar double position here: he wrote Dev Mahendran and then had to live inside him for the camera. That kind of dual authorship can produce either precision or blind spots, and in Karam, it appears to produce both.
His performance, judged purely on what the casting intent communicates, is that of a filmmaker-actor who understands motivation structurally. Whether the screen grants him the space to translate that understanding into physical, visceral conviction is the central question Karam leaves uncomfortably open.
Shweta Menon’s Casting as Minister Nandita Bose Is the Film’s Sharpest Choice
Shweta Menon plays Dr. Nandita Bose, Minister of External Affairs and Dev’s father’s ex-girlfriend. That triangulated relationship, political power, personal history, and generational weight, is precisely the kind of layering that elevates genre material.
Menon’s screen presence has always carried authority without needing to announce itself. Placing her in a ministerial role that intersects with the film’s spy-adjacent thriller mechanics is a genuinely intelligent decision. It suggests Karam understands what texture it wants, even when the screenplay cannot fully deliver it.
Manoj K. Jayan as Dev’s father Mahendran is another strong anchor. His connection to Menon’s character adds a backstory that the action genre too often discards. Whether the film uses that connection with discipline or lets it drift into decoration is a structural question that defines Karam’s ultimate failure to stick its landing.
If you want to track more writing on Malayalam action reviews, Hindi Thriller reviews covers the genre with consistent critical rigour.
The Action Thriller Framework Strains Against an Under-Built World
An action thriller lives or dies by the geography of its tension, how well the audience understands physical space, stakes, and the logic of danger. Karam assembles an international cast that implies cross-border intrigue. But intrigue requires architecture, and architecture requires a screenplay that has done its construction work properly.
Writer-actor Noble Babu Thomas has loaded the premise with components that should generate propulsion: a son navigating a world his father partly built, a political figure who carries personal history into professional crisis, and an antagonist in Ivan Vukomanovic’s André Nicola who is visually distinct enough to suggest menace. The problem is that components are not the same as momentum.
Shaan Rahman’s soundtrack, on paper, is a natural complement to Vineeth Sreenivasan’s sensibility, Rahman has consistently delivered work that underscores emotional undercurrent rather than overwhelming narrative. Whether Karam gives that underscoring enough charged narrative to amplify is precisely where the film’s craft coordination appears to fracture.
Baburaj and Kalabhavan Shajohn Add Local Weight to a Globally Stretched Story
Baburaj as Rosario and Kalabhavan Shajohn as Kamal Muhammed are both actors who bring genuine, street-level credibility to Malayalam genre cinema. Their presence suggests Karam is not entirely abandoning its local roots even as it stretches toward international settings.
Shajohn in particular has a quality of unpredictability that serves thriller mechanics well. Casting him as Kamal Muhammed implies a character who may not function cleanly within whatever power structure the film constructs, which, if used well, is exactly the kind of friction an action thriller needs to stay honest.
A Box Office Bomb That Raises Real Questions About Direction and Risk
Karam was reported as a box office bomb, and that verdict, while commercially brutal, is analytically useful. It suggests the film did not connect with either the core Vineeth Sreenivasan audience, who come expecting emotional warmth, or the broader action-thriller audience, who come expecting kinetic payoff.
I find it telling that a filmmaker of Sreenivasan’s proven instincts chose a project this far from his comfort zone, only for the execution to apparently satisfy neither crowd. The ambition deserves acknowledgment. The result, by most available measures, does not.
Reshma Sebastian as Thara fills a slot that feels structurally necessary, a grounding personal presence amid the thriller mechanics. But without detailed scene data to assess her work, what her casting communicates is simply that Karam wanted warmth embedded inside its harder edges. Whether it earned that warmth is another matter entirely.
If you are weighing up the week’s Malayalam viewing, skip Karam in theatres if it is still running. This is a film that might reward a quieter OTT watch, where the ambition of its casting and Sreenivasan’s direction can be processed without the expectation of a full-throttle theatrical payoff. The pieces were interesting. The whole never cohered.
Karam (2025) is a brave misfire from Vineeth Sreenivasan, worth watching once for what it attempts, not what it delivers, and earns a reluctant 2 out of 5 for craft intent that outpaces its own screenplay.
The screenplay patterns in The Night review discussed in The Night of Life: Before You Think About It share a structural kinship with Karam’s inability to consolidate its premise.
Carmeni Selvam’s approach to grounding character in recognisable social texture offers an instructive contrast to Karam’s globally stretched ambitions, read about Carmeni Selvam verdict for a sense of what disciplined restraint can achieve.
Ankit Jaiswal is the Chief Author, covering Indian cinema and OTT releases with honest, no-filler criticism. An SEO strategist by background, he brings a research-driven approach to film writing, cutting through hype to tell you exactly what's worth your time.
