The movie starts off with Rhythm (Keerthy Suresh) having nightmares of her son, Ajay, being kidnapped by an unknown person dressed in a Charlie Chaplin attire holding an umbrella (a terrible amalgamation of Charlie Chaplin and the famous Batman villain, Penguin).
We are then slowly revealed that Ajay was indeed kidnapped six years ago and there hasn’t been any clue as to who the kidnapper was and whether Ajay was still alive, but Rhythm still believes that her son is still alive. She is constantly reminded of her son and the incidents that took place on that fateful day. The images of the “Rest in Peace” bouquet, the buzzing of the insects, the images of the clothes and shoes of Ajay keeps coming back to her. She sets out on a path to find Ajay and another kid (Anjana) who has been kidnapped recently.
“Behind all your stories, there is always a Mother’s story. Because hers is where yours begin.”
A mom is not just a person, not just another relation, it is much more than that, just as Rhythm points out in the end of the movie that being a mom is an Attitude. The pain a mom would feel during the birth of a child can never be attributed to anything equivalent. Even before the birth of her child, the care she has to take on the baby when it is inside her, she evolves as a mom along with the baby growing inside her. She has to make sure that the baby is safe and sound, and will have to make sure that the baby trusts her with all her life that its mom would do anything to protect it.
All of the above mentioned attributes were fairly portrayed by Keerthy Suresh. We see a tired and depressed Keerthy Suresh throughout the scenes where she grieves for the lost kid. She has done a good job in the scenes involving emotional sequences, and in most parts of the movie, as portraying a pregnant woman, she brought in the characteristics (pain and discomfort) of pregnant women.
However, the character does not seem to be portrayed consistently throughout the movie. The character starts off as a tired, depressed mother grieving to the loss of her child. But the motivation for a pregnant mother is just that she has to find her boy, there is no clue as to where the boy is, but she just believes that the boy is alive. She keeps visiting the place where she had lost him, and bam, six years later, there is a clue to finding the killer. Coincidence, isn’t it? And the moment, there is a clue she turns into this can-walk-in-any-terrain-even-for-a-pregnant-woman kind of an adventurous woman. She keeps getting into trouble putting the unborn child in constant danger, define the motherly instincts here.
The police in the story do not even have an ounce of detective skills to get an headway about the missing child. It looks like they search for a while and after a few moments, they would lose interest in the case and move on to another missing case, which has mounted to 17 missing children in the last 6 years. The movie had a lot of scope to show the motherly instincts come into play while searching for the child, but we see nothing of that sort here. I would have loved to see the writing take up the characteristics of a mother being intelligently used while deducing the whereabouts of her child. It was good to see Keerthy Suresh bring out a good performance, but the character development is horrible for it to be a memorable one.
The movie is regressively okay for most of its run time, but with the last half an hour, it goes on to question the whole purpose of us sitting and watching the movie in the first place. The first half has its moments with the thrill and the suspense consistently being maintained. The suspense as to who the kidnapper is was slowly built up, the sequence involving the killer entering Rhythm’s house to have a chat with Ajay was really good.
The movie goes downhill soon after intermission. The writing is bizarre in a lot of places since then. The dialogues sound very weak with the episodes of Rhythm’s friends saying that they are with her but leave soon after that, with the doctor saying that the Serial Killer is a ruthless monster, but do we see a serial killer who is sensible and forgiving? Come on! Cheesy and clichéd dialogues ruin it for the audience.
We also get to see the two husbands of Rhythm (ex-husband Raghu and current husband, Gautam) not even battling an eye during the emotional sequences. At least Raghu (played by Lingaa) showed some anger and pain when his son was lost and in the scenes where he felt bad for leaving Rhythm during tough times, but with Gautam, it made me wonder was he a really a human or was a highly advanced Robot/Humanoid, devoid of any emotions and expressions, had been created to play Gautam. Madhampatty Rangaraj (of Mehendi Circus fame) doesn’t even move a face muscle throughout the movie, it makes me wonder if he was even trying to move one. The way he proposes to Rhythm, the way he never really is there for Rhythm throughout the movie, but incidentally comes into the frame whenever Raghu comes in, was ridiculously written as well.
We see a ridiculous rip-off/inspiration from the Hollywood horror thrillers where the child is made to sleep in a separate room. It is understandable that it is a habit in the West to make kids sleep separately, but why does it have to be the same in a house in Kodaikanal? Some may say, it is just a movie and they would need such situations to be created for the story to move forward, but that shouldn’t be done at the expense of making it look so unintelligent.
And please do not get me started on the Doctor episode. It was the most ridiculous “game” I have ever come across in a movie, again an “inspiration” from the famous character Hannibal Lector, made the movie go down to ridiculously uninteresting levels. And another so-called shocking reveal connecting to a series of past incidents of Rhythm completely derailed the movie to the extent that it could never recover from.
The real hero of the movie was indeed the brave, intelligent Cyrus. Cyrus is always there for Rhythm, whenever she is in trouble. It protects Rhythm and her family from imminent danger they face. Of course, it is understood that dogs are always faithful to its owners, it was good to see a dog been given a lot of prominence and character. But, a little more bonding sequences between Rhythm and Cyrus during normal times would have made it perfect. Kudos to the dog and probably its trainer for giving us some relief from an already exhausting movie.
Even for a poorly written movie, we could say that Rhythm and Cyrus make a good pair. With some careful and sensible writing, these two could actually have a detective series of their own. We could see that Rhythm is quite brave and adventurous (definitely needs a lot of character depth and definition), and also good enough to deduce a way around the problem when asked the right questions. And with Cyrus being the way it is, the pair could actually do wonders, but if and only if it is handled the right way detective stories are to be handled. With the kind of writing that this movie possesses, it is definitely bound to go downhill, but with a good writer (may be even Karthik Subburaj himself), we could have our very own Tintin Adventures, may be an “Adventures of Rhythm and Cyrus“.
Penguin is a movie that starts off well and fairly stays good enough during the first half. However, poor writing and some preposterous characterisations wrecks havoc on a movie that had a lot of potential to become a good thriller.
