Patriot: Mammootty and Mohanlal reunite, streaming June 5

Patriot, Mahesh Narayanan’s political thriller, reaches ZEE5 on June 5, and its pull is a reunion 18 years in the making: Mammootty and Mohanlal sharing a frame again, Mammootty in the lead and Mohanlal in an extended cameo. The film opened in theatres on May 1, and the streaming release carries it in Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi, with Fahadh Faasil, Nayanthara and Kunchacko Boban also in the mix.

At its centre is a man who helped build a sophisticated government surveillance programme, believing it would keep the country safe, then finds it turned into a weapon against ordinary citizens through manipulation, intimidation and control. When he moves against the system he helped create, the film settles onto the blurred line between patriotism and betrayal, asking whether exposing the truth makes a person a traitor or the real patriot. The setting is Indian, but the anxieties it works with, surveillance and privacy, are not local to anywhere.

“Patriot is a story that reflects the fears of the time we live in,” Mahesh Narayanan said, describing a world where technology built to protect people turns into an instrument of fear and control. What drew him in, he said, was the emotional conflict at the core: a man forced to face the consequences of something he once believed in completely. Mohanlal, on sharing the screen with Mammootty again after so long, called it the thing that made the experience better still.

Revathi, the filmmaker Rajiv Menon, Darshana Rajendran and Sarin Shihab fill out the supporting cast. Patriot starts streaming on ZEE5 on June 5.