Roy: "An interesting take on the psyche that falls short of its potential!!!"

Whenever SonyLIV has procured the streaming rights to a Malayalam movie, more often than not it has lived up to expectations & hence when Sunil Ibrahim's "Roy" was announced, I was eager to check it out. Another reason for the motivation was the work done by Sunil in the past such as "Arikil Oraal", "Chapters" etc., a rather underrated director whose movie themes are usually quite intriguing but turns out to be rather flat towards the end. Yet again he had come up with an interesting story which explored the psyche of the protagonist performed by Suraj Venjaramoodu & it remained to be seen what he had done this time around. 

Roy (Suraj) is an individual who suffered from a psychological disorder whereby at times he wasn't able to distinguish between reality & dreams. This literally meant he didn't have much of a social life with his only solace being his wife Teena (Sija Rose), a journalist & writer by profession. Her present assignment was penning the biography of a prominent writer who had incidentally gone missing & this in turn put her under the scanner of the investigation team. To further add to the mystery, even she goes missing & Roy was left with no option but to search for her even as the police didn't seem convinced about his concerns. 

Within the first half an hour, we are convinced of the potential that Sunil's script had coz of the involvement of the play of the human mind. The pace is pretty slow to the point of being sluggish & that can be a turn off for quite a few. But if you are able to sit through it, you can surely going to get drawn into it even more. In terms of the execution, I certainly felt that Sunil left quite a few glaring issues which prevented the movie from being more impactful. Though we are aware of Roy's condition, we don't quite empathize with it & that is primarily because of the lack of sequences to build that segment. The climax was also rather underwhelming as it concluded in a jiffy rather than create adequate suspense. On the technical side, Munna's BGM was fine while Jayesh Mohan's visuals was also ok. 

As the protagonist, Suraj has done a fine job for large parts though the romantic segments felt rather forced & lacked chemistry. It was a pleasant surprise to see Sija in a prominent role & she has done complete justice to it. The only time we get to see Shine Tom display normal behaviour is in movies & as in most cases, he has done a fine job with the dialogues being legible. The rest of the cast such as Jins Baskar, Riya Saira etc. have also done their parts aptly.

Verdict: It obviously has shortcomings that might turn off quite a few especially the pace, the hurried climax etc., but it still has content that will keep us engaged. I'm not sure whether it would have a sequel, though the manner in which it has been concluded surely gives scope for that. In short, give it a try!!!

Rating: 2.75/5

Regards...Ben