Hridayapoorvam: As Light And Harmless As They Come
Hridayapoorvam is quintessential Sathyan Anthikad — light on its feet, airy and like a warm beverage on a rainy afternoon.
Still from Hridayapoorvam.
Last Updated: 07.24 PM, Aug 29, 2025
SANDEEP BALAKRISHNAN (Mohanlal), a successful cloud kitchen owner from Kochi, possesses a generous heart. His tenants are three aspiring filmmakers who eat in his kitchen for free, and he treats them like his own children. They narrate their script to him, an ultra-violent revenge story that disgusts him to the point of disowning them. Even their insistence that “violence is trending” doesn’t change his mind. This scene, from Sathyan Anthikad’s new film Hridayapoorvam, is a comedic aside, but it also conveys the self-awareness of this film. It’s quintessential Anthikad — light on its feet, airy and like a warm beverage on a rainy afternoon, but now such a film wants to reinforce its merits. The saturation of high-octane mass entertainers has pervaded Indian popular culture so forcefully and brazenly that even a Malayalam film feels the need to acknowledge, course correct and advertise. But, no complaints, it is indeed nice to stay in a different zip code than whatever is trending.
Sandeep’s generous heart is courtesy of an army man from Pune. The aptly titled Hridayapoorvam begins with the fanfare of the man’s heart in a cold case arriving in Kerala from Pune just in time for the transplant procedure. For a change, a film begins not with a hero dying (only to be brought back later) or with a hero saving others from death, but with his survival of a delicate procedure in an operation theatre, one where he receives a new heart. And Anthikad keeps all this light. Siddiquie plays the busybody brother-in-law, OK Panicker, causing enough commotion in the hospital for everyone to wish his heart to stop abruptly. Sandeep survives. He returns home with a new heart and a new nurse in Jerry (Sangeeth Prathap). He keeps a close eye on his business, and I mean that literally. He is always on his phone, not watching reels or doom scrolling like a normal person, but observing his kitchen and establishment via the CCTV cameras in every corner and pulling up his employees if they so much as take a wrong step. And all of this is played for laughs.
Soon, Haritha (Malavika Mohanan) arrives and tells Sandeep that the heart now beating inside him used to belong to her late father, and she would like that heart to beat near her presence at her upcoming engagement in Pune. Sandeep is reluctant to the point of waving her off and then accedes. From here on, everything is a breeze. There is an obvious conflict during the engagement, and it is called off. No problem, the film brushes it off to the point that later in the film, Haritha, her mother Devika (Sangita Madhavan Nair) and Sandeep are fondly looking at photographs from the half-remembered event. Sandeep suffers a spinal injury and is forced to stay in Pune longer. No problem, he settles right into Haritha and Devika’s home and even makes each of them feel seen, way better than the unit with Haritha’s actual father. Sangeeth Prathap brings the skittish energy of his role in Premalu here as well. Hridayapoorvam is often a buddy comedy featuring Sandeep and Jerry. Anthikad and writer Sonu TP (story by Akhil Sathyan) even tease a potentially precarious love triangle between Sandeep, Haritha and Devika. Something heavy and slippery belongs in a different film, but not when they simply want to mine it for laughs. The film doesn’t so much as confront it, and that’s a relief.
The theatrics in the film are reserved for the first ten minutes. The hurried frenzy of a heart arriving in the city in a helicopter, followed by the transfer to an ambulance and then the hospital, with media swarming every inch of its way, is the highest register of emotion we get from this film. Usually, a film requires high stakes to make a compelling film, but Anthikad wants to avoid drama because everyone here — Sandeep, Haritha, Devika, Jerry — wants to stay as far away from drama as possible. There is only one odd character who loves bringing the house down with his drama, and that doesn’t sit well with this bunch. They drive him out of the film at the nearest chance, and that is OK Panicker. The film, though, is more than OK.