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Uyir opens with a flashback sequence showing a young boy travelling on a train in Maharashtra with his little sister and their parents. En route, the girl goes missing and is never found again, which scars the boy forever. Years later, he, Ajeeb (Roshan Mathew), is all grown up and now works at the Dharmadom police station as an SI on probation.

One of those days, the decomposed body of a woman is found in an abandoned well in the locality. During the investigation, Ajeeb and ASI Joy (Baiju Santhosh) identify the deceased as Shobha (Shruthy Menon), a manual labourer. Although they initially assume that it’s an open-and-shut case of suicide, a mystery starts to shroud Shobha’s death as Ajeeb and Joy begin digging deeper. Once they track down her “estranged husband,” Raju (Vinod Sagar), the two officers make some startling revelations that change the course of the case.

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One of the biggest shortcomings of Uyir is its loosely written script, which never even scrapes the surface of its socially relevant theme. At its very core, the story deals with the alarming number of missing children cases reported around us and how many of them end up unsolved. Before the credits roll, Uyir even presents statistics on this issue.

However, the major problem is that the movie only lands on its central theme towards the end. For almost 80 per cent of its runtime, Shobha’s two children are little more than background figures. Worse still, Uyir doesn’t even devote a single scene to establishing them as individuals with identities; it’s only at the end that the movie reveals their names properly, rather than as just passing references.

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Instead, for most of its runtime, Uyir focuses on the investigation surrounding Shobha’s murder. With Nikhil K Menon and Shaji Marad’s script, based on a story by Anshad S, failing to deliver an emotional impact, none of these plot devices creates a significant impression.

Even if we ignore Uyir’s sloppy attempt to wrap up as a social drama and consider it solely an investigation drama, the movie still fails to impress, as these portions never actually pique the interest. This is mainly because the script is anything but watertight and gives off the feeling that the writers were simply going with the flow. Particularly poor are Uyir’s so-called twists, which come across as desperate attempts to keep the film going.

Unfortunately, since the characters fail to establish an emotional connection with the viewers and since the story never actually pulls us in, all these attempts fall flat.

Even though the actors, including Roshan Mathew and Shruthy Menon, have performed their roles decently well, none of them has truly shone. (Credit: Instagram/@uyir.movie)

Making matters worse, director Padmakumar’s execution is supremely unimpressive throughout the movie, as he never manages to breathe any life into the film. From one scene to the next, the movie keeps moving without anything holding it all together. Padmakumar’s vision here is so poor that, during a supposedly gripping instance, we are suddenly shown a semi-item dance, which appears to be included solely for the sake of it. The film’s overall colour grading — which features overly subdued hues — has also detracted from the viewing experience.

Although we see Ajeeb, Joy, and Shobha for much of the screen time, even these characters don’t leave a significant impact on us due to the lacklustre way they have been fleshed out. Even when they go through turbulent life situations or face emotional turmoil, Uyir never actually manages to communicate this with adequate intensity. This may be because the writers couldn’t ensure a gradual progression in the narrative, and instead, paid more attention to individual moments. As a result, the script is stripped of cohesiveness, and the lack of impact in these moments renders the whole film a dreary affair.

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Since the writers failed to establish the central characters well or explore their many layers, the characters never really connect with us on an emotional level. For instance, the first act is said to revolve around Ajeeb. In fact, the movie is split into multiple chapters, with the start of each announced using cards. Even in the chapter for Ajeeb, we never truly get to know who he is on the inside; Uyir focuses solely on showing us who he is on the outside, along with a few glimpses of his family setup.

The film also establishes early on that Ajeeb experiences brief panic attacks whenever he hears the sound of trains due to childhood trauma. But does this detail serve any significant purpose in the narrative? Not beyond a superficial level.

Going forward, the same can be said about all the central characters, including Shobha. Apart from scenes depicting the key plot points, most of the others come across as far too dry, and many seem to have been crafted solely to increase the runtime, ensuring that Uyir does not lose its feature-film label. Even the dialogues are extremely spiritless, unpolished and overly expository, making Uyir a difficult watch.

Instead of placing the misdirections naturally in the narrative, the writers have also lazily tried to misdirect both the police and the audience through Raju’s false confessions. Although the makers could have turned Raju into a solid unreliable narrator, they instead have focused solely on attempting to blow the audience’s minds, and these efforts have backfired big time instead.

Towards the end, Uyir also slips in a stereotypical portrayal of Dharavi, presenting it as a crime hub sans any other identity — something elitist mainstream Indian cinema has propagated for the longest time. Here, we also see symbols associated with Islam. Although Ajeeb is also a Muslim, his identity is understated throughout. But in Dharavi, all of a sudden, the identities of people become evidently apparent, and they are mostly Muslims. In fact, we even hear the Azaan when the cops arrive in search of Shobha’s missing children, indirectly associating the two in a problematic manner.

Even though the actors, including Roshan Mathew and Shruthy Menon, have performed their roles decently well, the lack of depth in their characters and the overall narrative prevent them from truly shining. Manikandan Ayyappa’s music, particularly the original songs, is the only impressive element in Uyir’s technical side.

Uyir movie cast: Roshan Mathew, Shruthy Menon, Vinod Sagar, Baiju Santhosh, Athulya Chandra
Uyir movie director: M Padmakumar
Uyir movie rating: 1.5 stars