An official adaptation of the French film Pour Elle, Savi follows the story of a regular housewife who stages a daring jailbreak to rescue her husband from a crime that he may not have committed. The story is surely an exciting proposition on paper but it did not necessarily translate into an exciting proposition on celluloid. In fact, I was confused on what the film wished to achieve in terms of its tone – was it planning to be a thriller? A comedy? A fun heist drama? And this for my was a major letdown in terms of the writing. What ought to have been a nail-biting film turns out to be a mumbling thriller that never really takes off, neither does it fully engage the viewers in a screenplay standing at 130 odd minutes. 

Typically, this sort of a premise needed a bit of a world building with a strong sense of characterization to truly invest yourself in the drama. Had this been a Malayalam film(even an adaptation), this would have had an intricate sense of world building wherein nothing would happen other than the viewers getting acquainted with the family. Instead here you are only briefly introduced to the family before getting straight to the point with the arrest of the character of the husband. And from here on, what follows is a confused kind of an execution that itself doesn’t know what it wishes to stand for. This ideally should have been a nail-biting whodunnit comprising of multiple versions of the truth, even as the jailbreak operation is planned. But the whodunnit part is almost put on a backburner immediately, only for the focus to be on the protagonist who stumbles upon a jail break artist who would eventually guide her in the operation. 

What flummoxed me even further was the shift in the tone of the drama, from being something serious to infusing the proceedings with bouts of comedy that made no sense. So you have a character frequently disguising himself to meet the protagonist, all in the name of CCTV cameras being stationed across the city, that resulted in the generation of a horrible mess. The focus of the end goal just wasn’t there, or should I say the seriousness in the writing was missing, thereby never fully engaging the viewers. Even the chain of events are so lacklustre and random that I was personally disconnected in the drama. For instance, the protagonist suddenly going to loot a bag of money only to randomly shoot a guy who has no relevance in the overall scheme of things was perhaps the most bizarre and random chain of events in a heist film. 

The unintentional laughter comes through during the actual heist which was touted as a jailbreak but instead becomes a hospital break, with the rescue op being staged in the general ward(rofl😂). This made me realise that the cops in this universe where a bunch of dimwits who couldn’t put two and two together, thereby allowing the protagonist couple an easy access. The plot becomes even more ridiculous when a character dressed as a clown helps the couple to escape. And quite honestly, what ought to have been a nail-biting finale resembling Baby turned out to be such a damp squib with only artificial excitement gracing the occasion. The late twist around the actual turn of events regarding the whodunnit made the film rather pointless. Overall, the screenplay is rather shoddy and makes a mumbling case for itself.