Review by Subhash K Jha: There is an ongoing aura of urgency in this reasonably watchable Malayalam film, a sense of imminent catastrophe which never quite reaches its destination. It is being dressed for a party to which you are not invited. This could be due to the uneasy plotting, which doesn’t seem too sure of which way the wind blows.
Is this supposed to be a reformatory rap on the knuckles or a crime thriller? Both, you say? That does seem to be a problem here. The fusion is far from fluid. The narrative moves in waves of missed opportunities rather than in any assured movement, indicating a game plan.
Initially, we get to see an unorthodox cop, Christo Xavier (Shine Tom Chacko), undertaking tuition classes for students on the floor above the police station. This causes an ongoing friction between Xavier and a schoolteacher, Nimisha (Vincy Aloshious), whose students take more interest in the tutorials next door than is healthy for her.
The breezy academic semi-romance takes a U-turn when one of the students, Arya (Anagha Annet), is a casualty of domestic abuse: Arya’s violent brother with massive anger-management problems thrashes the daylights out of her for having a boyfriend.
This part of the film is dark and not entirely able to justify the need for so much violence in a film that starts off by telling us how law-enforcement agencies can be of help beyond the precincts of duty and jurisdiction and ends up telling us that crimes committed at home are hard to pinpoint let alone eradicate.
It is almost like watching a film with a split personality that ends up with up with no personality at all. Ironically, the best performance in this rudderless film comes from Deepak Parambol as Arya’s uncontrollably violent brother Vivek. In fact, that is the kind of volatile part Shine Tom Chako loves to play. It is good to see him in a positive role for a change.
However, Soothravakyam is the kind of self-destructive film which fails to recognise its own potential. It has a solid jawline but the torso is hazy, though not lazy. Sad that this film would be remembered more for its leading lady’s allegations of sexual misconduct against the leading man rather than its debatable intrinsic merits.
