editorturnedfilmmaker mahesh narayanans directorial debut take off has arguably been one of the most anticipated movies this year its fahadh faasils first film in over a year its got parvathy playing the central character its got kunchacko boban acting with the duo for the first time and most importantly its based on the reallife rescue of 46 indian nurses who were stranded in iraq during the countrys civil war in 2014while most of base story is already known to malayalis the challenge for the filmmaker and his team was to make the movie engaging and he takes enough cinematic liberties to accomplish that task with aplomb the first half introduces us to nurse sameera parvathy 31yearold divorcee who is putting a brave front trying to balance her work and family life in between the adversities she lets shaheed kunchacko boban in to her life and he becomes a ray of hope the first half develops sameeras character while paying careful attention to the travails of nurses it also shuttles between sameeras past and present till she and shaheed go to iraq for workmahesh ensures that he develops his characters so well and in thoroughly engaging manner so much that the movie in its first half is more of drama yet engrossingthe interval of the 2 hours 20 min movie is at a point where the civil war in iraq breaks out while also serving as a turning point in the characters livesparvathy is exceptional at her role while kunchacko packs a restrained yet powerful performance asif ali who plays parvathys exhusband comes up with a matured performance as wellmore updates to follow