Narivetta Movie Review: A Compelling Thriller?

Varghese Peter (Tovino Thomas) is a police officer who believes the law is a shield. Assigned to a remote village reeling from a series of brutal, unexplained deaths, he soon realises that the perpetrators are not the usual suspects. The victims - marginalised villagers, mostly landless labourers - have been systematically targeted by a shadowy operation with ties to the state machinery. Basheer Ahammed (Suraj Venjaramoodu), a weary local journalist, has been documenting the bloodshed. Together, they pull at a thread that leads to R. Keshavadas (Cheran), a senior bureaucrat with perfect alibis, and a network of enforcers led by the menacing Jayesh Mohan, nicknamed “Adakka” (Shahi Kabir). As Varghese digs deeper, the line between protector and perpetrator blurs. Nancy (Priyamvada Krishna) and Gracy (Rini Udayakumar), two women from the village, become key witnesses - and targets. The conspiracy is not just about murders; it is about a system that sanctions them in the name of order.

Anuraj Manohar, who also wrote the screenplay, clearly wants to say something about the quiet complicity of institutions. The film’s strongest moments are its quietest: a shot of Suraj Venjaramoodu’s Basheer smoking on a desolate roadside, an exchange between Tovino and Arya Salim’s C.K. Shanthi (a police officer with her own scars) that never raises a voice. These scenes suggest a director who understands that the horror of state violence is not in the gunshots but in the paperwork that follows. Unfortunately, the film too often defaults to loud, formulaic action. The chases are competent but derivative; a mid-film sequence in a rain-soaked market feels lifted from a dozen other Malayalam thrillers. The script also struggles with pacing. The first hour is taut, but the second half meanders into a subplot involving Nandhu’s Joy, a local fixer whose comic relief lands with a thud - a tonal misstep the film never recovers from.

Performances carry the picture. Tovino Thomas, working with a character who could have been a cardboard avatar of righteous fury, finds restraint. His Varghese is a man slowly losing his grip on moral certainty, and Thomas plays that unravelling with micro-expressions; watch how he listens to a victim’s testimony - his jaw tightens, his eyes soften, but he never breaks posture. Suraj Venjaramoodu, known for comedic roles, delivers a career-best turn. His Basheer is tired, cynical, yet stubbornly hopeful - a walking contradiction that Venjaramoodu inhabits with heartbreaking authenticity. Cheran, as the icy bureaucrat Keshavadas, brings a chilling politeness; his best scene is a dinner-table monologue where he explains the “necessity” of violence without raising his voice. Among the supporting cast, Priyamvada Krishna stands out as Nancy, her terror rendered in silence rather than screams.

Yet the film’s central flaw persists: it wants to indict an entire system, but it keeps personalising the villainy. By making Keshavadas a singular puppet master, “Narivetta” inadvertently suggests that removing one bad apple fixes the orchard. The villagers, for all their victimhood, remain largely voiceless - they are bodies in a statistic rather than characters with agency. The cinematography by Sudeep Elamon captures the lush, threatening landscapes of central Kerala, and the background score by Vishnu Shyam oscillates between eerie minimalism and conventional hero-music. The final act, a confrontation that tries to fuse action with moral reckoning, feels rushed - as if Anuraj Manohar ran out of time to fully explore the implications of his own premise.

Pros

• Tovino Thomas delivers a layered, restrained performance as the conflicted officer.
• Suraj Venjaramoodu proves he is one of the most versatile actors in Malayalam cinema today.
• The film’s central theme - state-sanctioned violence against the powerless - is handled with honest anger.
• Strong supporting turns, especially from Priyamvada Krishna and Cheran.
• Several sequences are beautifully shot and directed with an eye for atmosphere.

Cons

• The script leans heavily on melodrama in the second half, undoing earlier subtlety.
• Pacing drags in the middle, with a misplaced comic subplot that kills tension.
• The action setpieces feel recycled from better action films.
• The conspiracy is ultimately too neatly resolved, undermining the systemic critique.
• Villagers are more symbols than fully realised characters.

“Narivetta” is a film of admirable intentions and frustrating execution. It dares to ask hard questions about who gets to decide which lives are disposable, and some of its performances - particularly from Suraj Venjaramoodu and Tovino Thomas - deserve more nuanced material. But Anuraj Manohar’s screenplay cannot quite match its ambition; it opens doors only to slam them shut with tidy resolutions. For those willing to overlook the structural flaws and the occasional descent into convention, there is a raw, beating heart here. The movie works best as a showcase for its actors and as a conversation starter about a very real, very uncomfortable subject. A solid one-time watch, but not the classic it could have been.