Even though it was an unofficial remake of the 2005 Hollywood film Four Brothers, Big B is considered as a pathbreaking film in the history of Malayalam cinema due to its stylish making. Big B introduced a new style of filmmaking and has later attained a huge cult following. [1][2][3][4][5]
Plot
Mary John Kurishingal gets killed under circumstances, where her adopted sons arrive for her funeral: Bilal- a gangster and trapeze player in Mumbai, Eddy- a hotel owner, Murugan – an action choreographer in film industry and Bijo- a student. The brothers take it upon themselves to unearth the mystery behind Mary's murder. Murugan is in love with Rimy, the daughter of Tommy Parekkadan, a happy-go-drunkard, who is against their relationship. Bilal starts meeting his old friends and contacts in the Kochiunderworld to receive information about the killers.
They piece the evidence together and find out that the murder was committed by two professional assassins from Mumbai. ACP Balaji Shakthivel and CI George are put in charge of Mary's murder case, where they begin the investigation, but cannot fetch any evidence to prove anything related. They soon find out that the murder was one of the many meticulously planned operations, which are aimed to check Mary's intrusions into unlawful exporting of children from Kochi. The unlawful operations are actually handled by the Mayor and a notorious and dreaded gangster named Sayippu Tony.
Meanwhile, Bilal makes Tommy accept the relationship between Murugan and Rimy. One night, Bijo gets killed by Tony's henchmen. However, Bilal shoots one of the henchmen and learns that Tony is the brain behind the series of crimes. Later, Tony kills Shakthivel and warns the Mayor to obey his instructions. Bilal orders Eddy and Murugan to talk to Tony for knowing his demands. One of Tony's henchman named Pandi Asi joins Bilal and his brothers as he seeks vengeance on Tony, where they also become successful in keeping George (who was Tony's sidekick) on their side. Bilal threatens Mayor that he will expose his corruptive plans to the whole media, which causes the Mayor to shoot himself.
George files this as a suicide in order to save Bilal from the case. Eddy and Murugan are called up to an island by Tony and his henchmen. Tony arrives and opens up to Eddy about his plans to kill Bilal and the brothers, but Tony learns that his henchmen were bribed and are now against him. Asi reveals his grudge against Tony, where Bilal arrives at the spot and kills Tony after a long fight. Tony is buried under the ditch by his men. After their mission, Eddy lives a happy and peaceful life with his family. Murugan spends time cheering with Rimy, while Bilal is seen helping the poor kids of their colony.
Big B was released on 13 April 2007.[7] Amal Nareed announced a sequel to the film titled Bilal in 2017. It was dubbed in Tamil as Manik Baasha.[8]
Reception
Big B received critical acclaim for its cinematography and making, along with the use of few dialogues, dark color tone and extensive use of slow-motion and musical score, which redefines that an age-old mass action drama can be converted with a unique and fresh style. Mammootty gained lot of appraisal for his portrayal as Bilal, which remains one his most memorable characters.[9][10]
The soundtrack album was composed by Alphons Joseph with lyrics penned by Jophy Tharakan and Santhosh Varma. While the musical score was composed by Gopi Sundar. Shreya Ghoshal sang her first song in Malayalam through this film. The song 'O January' is an unofficial cover of Shakira's Ojos Así.
A sequel titled Bilal was announced by Amal Neerad on 17 November 2017 and was set to start principal photography in March 2020 but was postponed indefinitely owing to COVID-19 pandemic and has been in pre-production owing to script changes and scale.[11]
