SILENCE ("TESTS YOUR PATIENCE")

December 7, 2013.

Cast: Mammootty, Anoop Menon.

Director: VK Prakash.

Silence came out with a tempting cast and director combo which naturally upped the expectation but this one disappoints right from the start.

Aravindan (Mammootty) a leading advocate is just about to go to the next level in his career as the Bangalore High Court Judge. He has a wonderful family and a group of friends and leads an enviable life. All of a sudden a stranger starts harassing him over the phone, starts following him more or less like a shadow for no apparent reason and when all that crosses the limit Aravindan goes to his friend Neal George IPS (Anoop Menon) for help.

Right from the beginning you feel something is missing in the film every now and then be it the dialogues, scenes or the direction. Songs keep coming just for the sake of driving home certain clichéd points. But for the only reason that it is a VK Prakash film with Mammootty and Anoop Menon in the lead you keep waiting for the story to get engaging and you keep waiting and waiting and waiting.

Apart from the shabby direction and an even shabbier screenplay trying to instil suspense and intrigue into the audience, which fall flat, nothing much really happens in the more or less innocuous first half. The second half brings the utterly silly reason behind all the craziness that is happening in Aravindan’s life and it has to be told that this is one of the most ordinary VK Prakash films; one of the most ordinary suspense thrillers rather!!

There are very very few moments in the film that are worth watching and most of the time it is more of a messy collage of different scenes rather than a smooth flowing affair; substandard editing being one of the reasons. To make matters worse there is a really annoying piece in the BGM which keeps playing at regular intervals throughout the second half irrespective of it’s relevance to the situation; something which really tests your patience more so because it tries to project the superhero image of the protagonist when a normal scene with no BGM at all would have sufficed!

Towards the climax one starts to wonder if this was a thriller or more of a masala action film with the stupid underwater fight sequence among other things.

Silence feels like a looong journey inspite of the runtime being just two hours.

I am giving 1.5 for Silence. The theatres playing the movie are gonna be silent very soon.

Rating Scale (Out of 5)

Less than 2                   -           Unwatchable.

2    to 2.25                   -           Below average.

2.5 to 2.75                   -           Average.

       

3    to 3.25                   -           Good.

3.5 to 3.75                   -           Really Good.

4    to 4.25                   -           Great.

4.5 and above               -          Extraordinary.