Recently, when Jeethu Joseph’s Mirage was released, the major criticism it received was about the placement of twists in that movie. The new police investigation thriller, Dheeram, starring Indrajith Sukumaran, tries to avoid the burden of having twists. Unfortunately, the way this movie creates characters just for the sake of being unpredictable was so much that it almost felt like twists would have been a much better option. With the revealing lacking any sort of freshness and each chapter getting dragged on for too long, Dheeram tests your patience and delivers a familiar tale of revenge.
SI Stalin is being given the responsibility of the case of the DIG’s nephew’s murder. The investigation leads to another person, and the investigation team eventually finds that person’s dead body. Stalin sensed the possibility of the involvement of a serial killer, and what we see here is the investigation to find the killer and their motive.
On paper, the very final twist in this movie, and why the hero was dragged into this, makes sense. But as I said, the way the screenplay invests too much in each chapter elaborating on an already explained part makes the whole movie exhausting. One of the subtle creative choices of an editor is removing elements that feel very redundant. I think in the case of Dheeram, both script editing and film editing are insecure about removing what is unnecessary to the story. A good amount of chiseling would have definitely made this thriller sharper.
Another thing that distracts us from the case in focus is the writing of the dialogues. Recently, there have been conversations about OTT platforms asking writers to write lines in a way that even if the viewer is scrolling on the phone, they would be aware of the plot. The dialogues in many parts of Dheeram felt like that. Anyone who has seen at least a handful of thrillers would know what procedures should be done in a crime scene. And in this movie, we have Indrajith explaining to a constable their basic duty. Like I already said, the way the film decides to make itself something entirely different than a mere revenge tale leads to a scenario where they introduce one character after another. It was a bit too much that towards the end, rather than surprise, you are waiting for one more new character to appear. The background score is being applied on a louder level for every scene, and after a point, it loses that excitement element.
Indrajith is playing the role of the cop in his typical style, and he has that energy and enthusiasm to make that character believable. They have added this element to his character, where he recreates the crime scene in his head and predicts what may have happened. The initial placement of that imagination was so bad that when it finally comes to use in the climax, it just doesn’t have that impact. Divya Pillai and Nishanth Sagar are playing Stalin’s team members, and in terms of performance, there is pretty much nothing for them to do. Reba Monica John plays a crucial role in this movie as a journalist, and her dialogue delivery was terrible, almost taking away all the intensity associated with that character. Mild Spoiler Alert! A top Tamil actress, whose name was not mentioned anywhere, is also playing a crucial role, and their performance was fine.
Dheeram tries to overdo a simplistic revenge by focusing too much on each subplot. By the time we finish the movie and realize what triggered all this, the murders and stuff we saw in the beginning almost start to feel like a different movie altogether. If those overemphasis on melodramatic bits were not there, almost half an hour of this 150-minute movie could have been avoided. But just like how the hero is using a Ghoorkha that Kerala police actually uses only for high-range police stations, which is being used inside Kozhikode city in this movie, this thriller, directed by Jithin Suresh T, is more concerned with how it looks than what it demands.
