Patriot(2026)

Storyline

A man uncovers a corrupt politician's secret illegal spyware operation that's being used to spy on innocent citizens throughout the region. When he tries to expose the truth, he gets falsely framed for the crime and is forced to run for his life. Now desperate and on the run, he becomes an online vlogger and uses the internet as his only weapon to gather evidence, prove his innocence, and finally take down the powerful politician who set him up.

“Speaking truth just got dangerous.”

Vibe & Tags

Cast & Crew

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Shaheen SiddiqueVignesh

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RevathiCM Nalini Ramakrishnan

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Kunchacko BobanMichael Devassy

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Vineeth Thattil DavidRadhakrishnan

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MammoottyDr. Daniel James

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MohanlalCol. Rahim Naik

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Grace AntonyAnju

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Fahadh FaasilShakthi Sundaram

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Zarin ShihabAyisha Iqbal

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NayantharaLathika

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Mahesh NarayananDirector

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Anto JosephCrew

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Trivia

• Patriot marks Mahesh Narayanan's return to politically charged thriller territory, continuing his interest in ordinary people caught inside powerful systems — a theme he explored in Malik (2021) and Take Off (2017).
• The film's spyware storyline appears to draw from real-world controversies surrounding surveillance tools like Pegasus, which was widely reported to have been used against journalists and activists in India.
• Narayanan is known for embedding authentic procedural detail into his scripts — his research process for films often involves months of consultation with professionals in the field his protagonist inhabits.
• The choice to make the lead character a vlogger on the run reflects a very contemporary storytelling instinct — it lets the film use self-shot footage and social media as both a narrative device and a commentary on digital identity.
• Narayanan previously shot C U Soon (2020) entirely on smartphones and laptop screens during the COVID lockdown, so the digital and screen-native visual language in Patriot fits naturally into his filmmaking vocabulary.
• Kerala has a politically aware and highly literate filmgoing audience, and films that directly critique regional political corruption — as Patriot does — have historically performed strongly there when they feel grounded and specific.
• The DRW analyst profession at the centre of the story is a relatively rare protagonist choice for Malayalam cinema, signalling Narayanan's continued interest in depicting white-collar, technology-adjacent workers rather than conventional action heroes.