3 min readHyderabadApr 23, 2026 07:54 PM IST When director Mahesh Narayanan and his team were putting together the cast for Patriot, they hit a wall with one particular character. The film was conceived as a pan-India spy thriller, and the role in question felt like it needed someone with a certain weight, someone audiences across the country would recognise and take seriously. The initial instinct was to look north. Then Mammootty stepped in with a suggestion. “We first thought that since Patriot is a national-level film, we should cast a national-level actor,” Mammootty said, adding,”We looked at character actors up north. I said we don’t have to go too far when we have someone here. We can talk to him and see.” The someone he was hinting at was Mohanlal. What followed was a conversation that brought together two of Malayalam cinema’s biggest names on the same screen for the first time in nearly 17 years. Their last full-fledged collaboration was Twenty:20, which released in 2008. A character Mohanlal could not turn down What …