Soothravakyam Review | An Interesting Premise That Got Dragged Down by Excessive Melodrama

If you look at the script of the latest Malayalam movie Soothravakyam, there are no elements that are thrown in just for the sake of stretching the runtime. Everything we see on screen has a purpose, and since the movie has a very minimal runtime, it is not really beating around the bush. But the problem is the usage of melodrama and the decision to opt for an emotional closure to the film. Because of the stretched-out melodramatic elements that don’t get the support of good acting, Soothravakyam becomes this interesting thought that needed a refined execution and a much better pool of actors.

Christo Xavier is the CI in a particular police station, and he has this habit of giving tuition classes to students in the local school. Because of his good quality tuition, students started to bunk the regular classes, and it created friction between the police officer and the class teacher Nimisha. In the midst of all this, a man goes missing, and what we see in the movie is the investigation to find that person and its possible links with other people in the picture.

On a scripting level, the placement of the setups is technically accurate. Even though most of them have this look and feel of a comic gag, as the story progresses, we sort of realize that what we saw till that point has a connection with something big happening. But the placement of all these elements is not subtle. Even the most casual mention of an event is done in a way that the audience will either feel like “why it was necessary,” or they will understand that it is placed deliberately. The screenplay fails to create intrigue, and hence, even when things get revealed, we miss that wow factor.

Directed by Eugien Jos Chirammel, the story of the movie is credited to Rejin S Babu, who previously wrote and directed Vijay Babu and Anumol starrer Pendulum. In a way, it is a crime thriller that eventually becomes a moving drama. And when you look at the whole picture, you would realize that the whole tuition class scenario, which feels like an unnecessary element, is incorporated into the movie to enhance the emotional quotient of the climax. But the humor and pleasantness of those initial phases were so forced and lame that the supposed-to-be-touching climax falls flat. Somewhere, I felt the movie had the scope to have a positive, happy ending that wouldn’t have looked filmy. But the writers sort of preferred a different approach.

This movie was the center of all the controversy, where Vincy Aloshious had to raise a complaint against Shine Tom Chacko. On screen, Shine is playing this soft-spoken, well-mannered police officer who is giving classes to kids, and in one scene, he is even asking students not to smoke illegal stuff. In a recent interview, Shine said that he has redubbed for a lot of his recent films. I don’t know whether Soothravakyam was in the list. But except for a few words here and there, the pronunciation was in sync with the on-screen character. No offense to the talent of Vincy Aloshious. But her character felt pretty inconsequential to the movie. It was almost like a decoy character that would make us think that the movie is about a rivalry between a police officer and a teacher. One of the key characters in the film is played by this young boy named Nazeef, and unfortunately, he couldn’t pull off the excessively dramatic representation of the trauma associated with that character. Even other supporting characters, including the fellow police officers and parents of some of the students, are not able to handle the overdone melodrama.

Soothravakyam, on paper, has those sparks, and one could understand the potential the producers saw in the subject. However, like I said, the lenience towards making it an emotional drama over a thriller dilutes the intensity of the story, and the movie really needed some proven performers to make those sentimental portions work in favor of the film. Soothravakyam is one of those “could have been much better” films that lost its grip during making.