Soothravakyam movie review: fails to get the equation right between a light-hearted drama and a crime thriller

Cops without any baggage are so hard to find in movies these days that the police officer protagonist and even the entire police station in Soothravakyam stand out as different, although not exactly in a good way. Neither do they have personal troubles nor are they challenged much by professional assignments for a good part of the movie. This leaves them enough time to run a tuition centre for school students on the top floor of the police station, with Circle Inspector Christo Xavier (Shine Tom Chacko) doubling up as a teacher.

The policemen are so diligent in their teaching that they even go to the extent of visiting the houses of students who are absent from class. So much so that Nimisha (Vincy Aloshious), the teacher at a nearby school feels students are losing interest in her class because of the tuition classes at the station. In Eugien Jos Chirammel’s debut directorial, this teaching activity of the policemen is projected as one of its novelties, but we are never told how it came about. Just like the rest of Soothravakyam, nothing is explored beyond what you see on the surface. Not even a single classroom exchange is shown to convey the equation that the officer shares with the students.

The only purpose of the school in the narrative is probably the connection of one of the attendees to the disappearance of a youth in the neighbourhood. The screenplay, co-written by the director and Rejin S. Babu uses this school atmosphere to set the scene, before it makes a delayed entry into a crime story. One aspect of this investigation, involving an abandoned pacemaker, turns out to be one of the few interesting bits in the whole film. But, this story comes too late into the picture, almost as an afterthought, preceded by a meandering screenplay and oddly edited sequences that hardly make an impact. Neither the light-hearted scenes, nor the police procedural towards the fag end evoke the expected emotions in the audience, partly due to the patchy writing.

The illogical anger and extreme violence of a brother towards his much younger sister (Anagha) is used to drive the narrative up to a certain point. The talented Deepak Parambol is wasted in the one-note character of this perpetually angry, overly violent elder brother. However, Shine Tom Chacko appears to have got out of the rut of characters which were hard to differentiate from his real-life persona uttering incomprehensible lines. Vincy, a capable performer, gets a severely under-written character, who appears only in a few sequences.

Caught between a light-hearted drama and a crime investigation, Soothravakyam does not get the equation right.