This is the start of a super weekend with so many new releases that I will have to work overtime to keep up with them. Ok, so I have just finished watching the first of the many new releases, Nishabdham on Amazon Prime, its trailer seemed extremely gripping, is the movie as good, lets find out.

Nishabdham is a murder mystery wherein a cello player is murdered years after a similar incident that took place wherein a couple were brutally murdered in the exact same manner. And you just have his deaf and mute fiancée as an eye witness. Is it more than what meets the eye? The story had an excellent premise which was thrilling, with the murders taking place within the first few minutes. At this point, your mind is running overtime to piece this mystery – Is there a supernatural element? How are the two murders related? But as the story progresses, even with its twists and turns, the movie falls flat. The screenplay after the initial high is downright silly. Why would you tread an obvious path(the reveal can be seen from a distance) when there were at least a couple scenarios that I could think of. In fact if the screenplay was written from the point of view of the one murdered, with two parallel tracks doing the rounds, then the audience would have been engrossed in the drama. Instead, it turns out to be a damp squib that keeps getting silly by the minute. And that climax, unintentionally funny and loose to the core, making no effort to even join the dots. It just pains me, because again the premise was excellent. The dialogues are average. The music and BGM are good and in a way make the film watchable. Director Hemant Madhukar has done a very patchy job. As the movie progresses, the movie gets sillier by the minute.

If the writing is weak, the performances more often than not cannot salvage the sinking ship. But here, at least a couple of the performances save the day to an extent. Madhavan as Anthony is excellent in a never-before-seen shade. It requires some amount of skill to save the film from the blushes and he does just that. Anushka Shetty as Sakshi who plays the deaf and mute girl is also outstanding and while she is onscreen, she does have your attention. Anjali as Maha is alright, Shalini Pandey as Sonali is good in an underwritten role. Subbaraju is strictly okay as Vivek. Michael Madsen, who has acted in films like Reservoir Dogs and Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, is reduced to a caricature here. Why? Just why?

Nishabdham is strictly an average affair mainly due to its lacklusture writing. The performances ensure that this is not a train wreck but this one can be safely skipped. This was one film that looked very promising, Alas with a heavy heart…..Available on Amazon Prime.