Ivide

Ivide has been in the news for a while for many reasons and the most striking one was that it was said to be the first commercial cinema from ace director Shyamaprasad. To be honest that’s not true. Shyamaprasad hasn’t tried to change his style of filming stories and the big disadvantage of Ivide is that his style of making doesn’t suit the movie which lacked a strong script. With intrigue missing in almost all frames, Ivide disappoints very much.

The movie basically revolves around three characters. Varun Blake is a police officer who was adopted by his American Parents from India when he was six. His ex wife Roshny who is now working in a company named Infotech. Krish Hebbar the CEO of infotech and also Roshny’s schoolmate. The life of these characters and how it gets clarity at the end of Varun’s investigation for a serial killer is what this dull crime thriller talking about.

First of all it was a heavy risk to show such an English speaking cinema to an audience who are quite adamant. Sadly that decision has backfired for the movie. I am not under estimating them, but a majority of our audience likes under estimating themselves. Talking about the movie, Ivide is somewhere like Reema Kagti’s Talaash which kind of solves the mystery and at the same time solves a lot of personal problems for the characters involved including the investigation officer. But there, we were travelling along with the characters, but here we are just observers who aren’t affected by their emotional side. Even though English wasn’t much acclaimed on a critical level, I loved the way Ajayan Venugopalan wrote characters. When it comes to Ivide, which is a crime thriller that deals with the emotions of the characters, the depth of characters were quite small. Much like many Shyamaprasad characters, Varun, Roshny and Krish are imperfect human beings. But to execute that self realization thought through that crime investigation, something extra was needed which apparently was missing.

On screen Prithviraj was good with his body language, expressions and especially with the accent. Bhavana managed her role very nicely. Nivin Pauly’s expressions and voice modulation had that thirst of a wannabe winner, but the dialogue delivery doesn’t have the required fire. Prakash Bare and the remaining foreign actors were kind of okay with their portrayal.

The typical off beat, realistic treatment of Shyamaprasad never looked like a matching one for the screenplay. The movie demands some pace at many points and at those points also it was struggling to create some intrigue. Many developments in the investigation don’t look much authentic. The screenplay is forced to be around the main characters giving lesser significance to the crime and the reasons that made that person a serial killer. Cinematography and edits are kind of okay. The songs were nice and the Gopi Sunder song’s orchestration somewhere reminded me his own Bangalore Days composition sung by Nazriya. Sync sound was used effectively.

Overall Ivide fails to be an exciting thriller with intensity in emotions. My rating for the movie is 2/5. The movie tries to have layers, but can’t succeed in creating interesting ones.