Ronth Movie Review: A dark, gripping police procedural

Buddy cop is an interesting film genre, attempted successfully internationally, where two people of contrasting and conflicting personalities work together to solve cases. In a sense, Shahi Kabir's Ronth can be categorised as a buddy cop film as it mostly pivots around a veteran officer and his young subordinate, who are hardly ever on the same page. But Ronth stands a cut above the typical buddy cop film with its hard-hitting socio-political commentary. Shahi, who has a strange affinity for dark endings, ensures he, once again, leaves the viewers heavyhearted. Or is it depressed?

Director: Shahi Kabir

Cast: Dileesh Pothan, Roshan Mathew, Jitin Puthenchery, Arun Cherukavil

A former cop himself, Shahi has experimented with policemen of different shades in his previous films Joseph, Nayattu, Officer on Duty—which he wrote—and his lone directorial, Ela Veezha Poonchira. Despite repeatedly playing around the same terrain, he has always tried infusing some freshness into his narratives. It's either with the core case involved, its investigation style, or the character sketches. This time, the freshness comes from the nature of the duty—patrolling. Though we're used to seeing multiple facets of policing, it is perhaps the first time that we get an insider perspective on how patrolling duty works. As SI Yohannan (Dileesh Pothan) and CPO Dinnath (Roshan Mathew) are out patrolling the streets day and night, we see them encountering a wide array of cases.

Ronth is not a plot-driven film. The episodic nature in the first half is similar to Abrid Shine's Action Hero Biju (AHB), one of the first films that broke the mould of cop dramas in Malayalam cinema. Similar to AHB, the patrolling party in Ronth maneuvers a range of issues—from petty drunk driving cases to handling grave crimes like abduction, child abuse, suicide, and domestic violence. As the pall of darkness sets in, man's true colours come to the fore and the crimes turn serious. It is only natural that men trying to prevent these crimes feel the toll.

Shahi's stories often have an undercurrent of personal tragedy, with characters usually haunted by past traumas or trapped by circumstances beyond their control. It extends to Yohannan and Dinnath, both of whom are battling their own personal crisis. As a result, they both have different approaches to the same case. For example, Dinnath, an idealist new to service, wants drunk drivers to be booked, while Yohannan doesn't mind taking money from them to repair the police jeep. They both are right in their own ways, and this continuous conflict of ideologies fuels the film forward. Shahi's writing is sharp and layered, as each episode defines the two characters better.

Yohannan might initially look like the typical policeman we are used to seeing in our cinema—brash and foul-mouthed. But from the beginning, you know there's more to it than meets the eye. Dileesh Pothan's performance is also such that you don't outright despise the character. He tries desperately to hide his vulnerabilities and fears, but they keep popping up invariably. Like Nayattu's Maniyan (Joju George), Yohannan is also a battle-scarred cop who knows all the tricks of the trade. Though we see only one working day from his 25-year-long service, the spree of unpleasant experiences he endures in those 24 hours is enough to suggest how harsh his battles were and where he got the scars from.

Dinnath, on the other hand, is a personification of a forthright young man, keen on making a difference with his uniform. At one point, Yohannan even mockingly calls him 'Bharathchandran', while advising him that you can't be a communist wearing Khakis. With one idealistic and the other pragmatic, there's a lot of such banter between the two. But beyond wordplay, these exchanges are imperative in registering their contrasting approach to life. Dinnath's overenthusiasm and instinctive responses are underlined from the very beginning, so that his sudden reaction in the end makes sense, even if it comes as a shock.

As a director, Shahi sticks largely to the fundamental rule of showing rather than telling, enabling us to connect the dots and build the characters and their backstories in our heads. While Dinnath has a trauma related to dealing with the mentally challenged, Yohannan loses his cool every time a child is affected. There are enough shreds of evidence planted in the visuals for us to grasp these details, but after all that effort in intellectual storytelling, it's sad to see these characters spelling out their past through gloomy monologues. The only solace is that two competent actors are in action, and they manage to elevate it with their performances.

Like Shahi's previous films, Ronth is also not easy to sit through, for it has many anxiety-inducing moments, like a daring break-in to rescue a child or a chilling scene set in a haunted house. The technical team, especially the sound department, manages to create an eerie atmosphere and make you feel the horror, even if you're aware this is not that kind of a film. Unlike usual police narratives, there's no heroic treatment or attempts to inspire. We only feel relieved that these men managed to survive all these ordeals. Manesh Madhavan's cinematography is also impressive in capturing even the micro emotions, that too mostly in a moving car, and with the judicious usage of top angle shots to register the sprawling area that the patrolling duty has to cover.

Shahi's works have often been critical of the system and how it's impossible to overpower its far-reaching hands. Nayattu, his most discussed work, was a direct critique of the police system being manipulated by politics. However, this led to him being criticised for being overtly sympathetic towards the police, with even accusations of him trying to whitewash the force. But with Ronth, he throws light on power structures within the police force. It is yet another reminder that policing is not an 'exciting' job, as many of our past, celebrated films made us believe. Depressing is the right word.