'Ronth' Movie Review: A Humane Buddy Cop Thriller About the Loss of One’s Innocence

Director: Shahi Kabir
Writer: Shahi Kabir
Cast: Dileesh Pothan, Roshan Mathew, Lakshmi Menon, Krisha Kurup, Nandanunni
Language: Malayalam

During certain passages in Shahi Kabir’s Ronth, we do not feel like we’re watching the story of two separate police officers, played by Roshan Mathew and Dileesh Pothan. Instead, the sparks in Shahi Kabir’s writing give us the feeling that we’re watching one person on two opposite ends of a character arc with each character representing a before and an after scenario of what serving in the police force can do to you. On one end of this arc is Roshan’s Dinnath, a junior officer at the Dharamshala police station in Idukki, still naive and open-eyed about the kind of upright police officer he wants to be. On the other is his senior Yohannan (Dileesh Pothan), decades into his service and closer in form to the pot-bellied police officer we’re used to seeing in real life.

Yohannan appears to be far more practical and real, almost to a fault. At one point, we see him taking money from a priest after an accident. Yohannan figures by going close to the priest that the latter's had a glass of wine, but instead of letting him go easy, Yohannan asks the priest to cough up a certain an amount of money. Yohannan is quick to clarify that this amount is not a bribe. He explains to Dinnath about the money he needs to pay the garage for fixing up their police jeep and how difficult it is to be able to get a refund from the police department. When Yohannan ends up giving us his side of the story, we needn’t fully agree with his point, but we understand where he’s coming from.

It’s a peculiar scene that pushes us deeper into the greys of being a police officer. Inspired from a series of real-life events Shahi Kabir bore witness to in his career as police officer, Ronth takes you through the events of a particularly loaded night of patrolling in rural Kerala. From the seemingly innocuous duty of escorting an important leader as his vehicle passes by, we see the stakes getting bigger for both Dinnath and Yohannan as matters go from bad to worse on this patrol.

In one instance, we see the much younger Dinnath trying to react to his instincts by rescuing a helpless boy from his deranged, unstable father. But even in this scene, what we see isn’t the heroics of an upright officer winning this battle. There’s a decidedly uncinematic messiness to the proceedings that give us a glimpse of just how clumsy these encounters are in reality. Moments later, when Yohannan steps in with his expertise to mitigate the situation, we’re not seeing bravery or courage. What we get is the work experience of an exhausted man who wants to finish his duty and simply go home to his wife.

It’s the sort of writing touch that gets us to rethink a character like Yohannan’s. From distancing him as yet another corrupt officer without a moral compass, the film slowly urges us to peel the layers off him to show us the person he was forced to become. We see Dinnath writing and then re-writing any notions he’s had about this senior too during the patrol. In a moving scene, when Yohannan deviates from our understanding of him, we see him go out of his way to help Dinnath and his ailing daughter, revealing glimpses of a defeated man who could never become the father he wanted to be. 

In a sense, after a stage of initial friction, we get the feeling that we’re watching a buddy cop thriller in which the senior gently prepares his subordinate for the real world. Yohannan too perhaps begins to see pieces of his old self in Dinnath, and as a result, he feels the need to be protective of him. 

Yet, in the efforts of the film to play out like a character study, it never deviates from the intensity of a thriller. The events get tense through the course of the night and everything that can go wrong, eventually does. And if you’ve ever watched any one of Shahi Kabir’s movies, you may be best prepared by expecting the worst outcome for our protagonists. Chances are that you’ll still come underprepared.

The only point at which you feel the film risking its flow is when we see Yohannan pause for a moment to deliver a monologue. As a part of the screenplay, you understand the need for this information for the way it humanises Yohannan. Yet you still wonder if there was a better way to convey the man’s past without having to tell it to us so simply. 

But we remain invested throughout because the film’s being carried by the two leads with their lived-in portrayals. As Dinnath, Roshan Mathew exudes vulnerability and a helplessness that makes him the film’s conscience. We rally behind him not just because we want him to make it through this night unharmed, but because witnessing his loss of innocence might be too hard to take in. And as Yohannan, Dileesh delivers his strongest performance as a person so jaded by his profession that he has become unrecognisable to himself. Ronth might not be the most tense thriller Shahi has yet written, but it’s a film that stands on its own for the complexity of its inter-personal relationships and the achingly depressing take on what it’s like to be a young police officer today.