Silence/Nishabdham - The amateurishness is deafening!

Bharath Vijayakumar

What is it with South Indian OTT releases featuring leading ladies. Leaving aside the quality of the films, there seems to be more than one similarity. This could be mere coincidence but Ponmagal Vandhal, Penguin and now Nishabdham/Silence. Slightly darker films with a rather brooding female at the forefront must be the first thing that comes to mind when these makers sit down to decide a project!

Nishabdham gets into business right away.There is a murder within the first few minutes and few minutes later we are introduced to Sakshi (Anushka) and Anthony (Madhavan). What also gets registered in these first few minutes is a sense of disappointment because a certain amateurish feel is unmistakable and this despite the presence of established stars on screen. Sakshi is an artist and Anthony is a musician. Does any of this information really matter? Not really, but I need to write something about the movie. Hence kindly bear with me.

Anjali (investigating officer) along with her boss (played by American actor Michael Madsen) provide some respite for us in the form of unintended humour. Both these actors seem to be the only ones excited about the film but that only means we need to put up with their histrionics. Atleast with Michael there is a certain intrigue with the way he moves around but Anjali trying to be all serious and yet cool only ends up being unintentionally funny.

It is tough to analyse where something went wrong because right through the film there is very little that really works. The later portions with a crucial reveal does hold some interest and you can now see that the one liner did have potential. This also explains why these established stars probably signed up for the film. But the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Bottomline:

With those twists towards the end, there is a possibility that the one liner might have sounded interesting. But Nishabdham / Silence is painfully uninteresting with a meandering focus, characters that you don't care for and performances that range from bad to perfunctory!

Rating: 2.25/5