Roudhram: All sound, no substance

Marikkar Films’ “Roudhram” written and directed by Renji Panicker is yet another police flick featuring Mammootty playing a cop for the 26th time in his career. It is not really different from the 25 roles that he had played in the past though. Roudhram is an extension of the earlier cop sagas penned by Panicker like Commissioner and Bharath Chandran IPS. The premise for Roudhram is the murder of a ganja cultivator (a theatrical Subair). The Chief Minister of the state (an inspired Janardhanan) hands over the case directly to Assistant Commissioner of Police, Narendran aka Nari (Mammootty). Every person who is tracked as having something to do with the deceased is killed and how Nari finally manages to nab the murderers is what the rest of the film is about. The problem with Roudhram is that it never really concentrates on investigating the murder. Instead the script is filled up with situations and characters that allow its protagonist to shout and show off. Thus, we have characters moving in and out of the narrative as per the whims and fancies of Narendran in true Renji Panikker style. There is so much of dialogue baazi in the movie that half way through the movie you feel like giving clues to Narendran to identify the criminals so that you can run out of the theatre. Time is also wasted in taking the narrative through the personal life of Narendran that constitutes his wife and school going son. Roudhram lacks the finesse that one normally expects from a murder mystery, it also does not have that edge of the seat situations that is extremely important for a cop drama. Roudhram thus fails being either an engaging murder mystery or an interesting cop story. The fault is with Renji Panikker’s direction. His script is okay but he simply cannot put the scenes together. He gets little help from his editor as well on this count. Sanjeev Shankar’s camerawork is good. The film has no songs and not much scope for background music either. Out of the mammoth starcast, Rajan P Dev, Lalu Alex, Sphatikam George and Sonia stand out. Vijayaraghavan plays a weakly written character while Saikumar overacts to his heart’s content. Newcomer Manju fails to make an impact. The strength of the movie definitely is Mammootty who carries the entire film on his broad shoulders. The actor is getting better with time and manages the rise above the script time and again to ensure a power packed performance. To sum up, Roudhram, in spite of all its shortcomings, will be a winning preposition for its producers thanks to Mammootty’s presence and performance as well as lack of competition from other movies released around the same time.