Karam – Malayalam Action Thriller Movie Review, Cast, Release Details

Karam is a 2025 Indian Malayalam-language action thriller film directed by Vineeth Sreenivasan and written by Noble Babu Thomas, who plays the main role in the movie. It is also a courageous move by Vineeth who experiments with the action thriller genre, unlike his previous sentimental and character-driven films.
Wikipedia

Intended to go on general release on 25 September 2025, Karam is a film that is planned to be a blend of thrilling action and soul, with a background of a global crisis that takes its main character out of his comfort zone.
Wikipedia

Plot Summary

The story revolves around Dev Mahendran (played by Noble Babu Thomas), a retired officer of the Indian Army that is heading to a family visit in another country that is expected to be a quiet family vacation. Out of the blue, however, in the imaginary foreign country of Lenarco, Dev is sucked into a life-and-death operation with serious emotional repercussions. This causes the events to unfold and he faces not only external forces, but also unresolved things that are in his past, and this results in excessive action sequences and dramatic confrontations.

The movie was filming and directed by Visakh Subramaniam and Vineeth Sreenivasan under banners of Merryland Cinemas and Habit of Life, Jomon T. John worked on the cinematography and Shaan Rahman worked on the score.
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Production Highlights

The producers of Karam have made huge investments in the value of production by shooting in a variety of global destinations such as stretches along the borders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, and sequences in Shimla, Chandigarh and Kochi.
Wikipedia.The marketing team has ensured the presence of high-impact posters and trailers that hyped the viewers of the film with the anticipation of a riveting story with suspense and action.

Critical Reception

Post-release, Karam received both positive and negative reviews by both the critics and audiences. The pacing and scripting of the storyline were also noted to be problematic by many reviewers, who pointed out that regardless of the good visual effects and the grandiosity of the action scenes, the story has no emotional impact and depth.The response of the audience reflected these feelings, as reviews on social media revealed bad dialogue and characterization as the strongest negative aspects, still some people were satisfied with the style and technical perfection of the movie.
IMDb

Box Office and OTT Release

Although it was anticipated with a lot of expectation, Karam did not perform well on the box office and underperformed as compared to its production budget and caused a controversy among cinema enthusiasts on how the creative vision of Vineeth Sreenivasan had changed.After its theatrical release, the film was transferred to OTT services to become available to more users. It started to stream on ManoramaMAX and Prime Video on 7 November 2025, which gives people an opportunity to watch the movie at home.

Final Verdict

Karam is a daring venture into Malayalam film making- an action thriller which was ambitious with international locations and a multi-dimensional lead character. Although its performance was not as expected by viewers, the movie is still commendable in ambition and quality production and trying to break the genre boundary when it comes to a mainstream Malayalam release.
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You either liked the last work of Vineeth Sreenivasan or just love watching an action thriller with international undertones, then Karam is worth watching especially on the OTT where its high action sequences can be enjoyed along with its narrative themes.