Sembi Review - Watchable Emotional Drama

Ashwin Ram

Sembi is an emotional drama starring Kovai Sarala in the female front, Ashwin Kumar plays an important role. The film is directed by Prabhu Solomon.

Premise

Sembi, an innocent 10-year-old girl is brutally raped by a gang of youngsters. It becomes a burning political issue and how the poor victim gets her justice forms the remaining story.

Writing/ Direction

Despite the crime being so hard-hitting, the early proceedings are very usual for the cinema format. Also, the treatment is overly dramatic, surprisingly the film slowly starts moving on the promising side. There are sufferable and boring parts, due to good writing at certain stretches, the story and the happenings around it are touching. The screenplay is engaging to an extent, yet manages to create a little amount of tension about the conclusion. The political game is a bit interesting and will easily connect with the general public. The movie happens predominantly inside a bus, the scenes taking place are partially clap-worthy and partly cringe. Most of the stuff is cinematic, and goes illogical at times too, but somehow taps the audience pulse by delivering some relatable moments. Quite an old-school directorial technique and offers nothing innovative in terms of presentation. Dialogues could have been more powerful for the situations to provide a better impact and to tighten the attention of the viewers.

Performances

Neat performance from Kovai Sarala, very focused and her career-best role. Ashwin Kumar does the job given to him, except for his flat dialogue delivery, his character is likable and sure to create a positive vibe on him going forward. The little girl is the central character, she expresses well especially while showcasing fear and anxiety. Thambi Ramaiah in a filler character does a bit too much. Plenty of other artists travel throughout the movie, no one is exceptional but thankfully no big odds too.

Technicalities

It’s a technically poor movie in all aspects. A couple of songs by Nivas K Prasanna are decent, but nothing soulful, the montage tracks are so bad. Background music is overused, there’s never a silent moment, everything is treated with non-stop melodramatic score. Visuals lack consistency, the rich moody shots we saw in Prabhusolomon’s earlier films Mynaa, Kumki, Kayal, etc are absent here, the magic is missing. Editing is absurd with random scene orders and suddenly some places are paused, lags quite a bit.

Bottomline

Convincing story that manages to create an impact despite the familiarity, delivered with a decent screenplay that has its moments. But the weak direction, disappointing input from the technical team tones it down to a passable one-timer.

Rating - 2.75/ 5