Siren movie review: A supremely distracted, underwheliming crime thriller

2/5

Story:

Samarth, a young and dynamic IPS police officer, is assigned with the solving of gruesome murder of a young woman. As he begins his investigation in support of a small team, he soon realizes that there's more than meets the eye and that the case has a shocking sinister motive underneath. Can he bring the culprit to justice before it's too late?

Review:

In Raju Venkaiya's Siren, the climactic twist, which is also the resolution, is left till so late that you find yourself having checked out of the film long ago. And despite the intensity and the shock value of that reveal, the weariness that the rest of the film has caused on you seems unpardonable and nothing else seems worthy enough to salvage things. Sure, the ending makes things slightly more tolerable but that's no balancing act.

One of the main reasons why Raju Venkaiya, the writer-director who makes his debut, falters big-time is the highly ineffectual leading man Praveer Shetty, who makes his debut as well. Praveer, boasting a neatly-sculpted physique that he acquired in a gym, fails miserably to impress as an actor and the fact that a role of a super-smart IPS officer is thrust upon him starts to feel quite cruel to us audience members. The director, too, is forced to award him a macho entry into the film but the young hero, instead of utilizing that grand welcome, trips over and never properly recovers after that.

Raju Venkaiya's craft is no saving grace either and his highly incohesive and jagged execution of an intriguing plot leaves you wanting so much more all throughout. He even has talents such as Achyuth Kumar, Avinash, Pavitra Lokesh, Sharath Lohithashwa and others at his disposal but none of them have the authority to impact the film. The cops in Siren are too randy, angry and corrupt whereas the bad guys have no personality to leave an impression or justify their misdeeds. And every time the narrative shows a sign of taking off, the director cuts back to his hero's bland face and leaves us both unhopeful and infuriated. 

The other main aspects of the film - the music, cinematography, production design, etc. - do not impress either despite the scope offered by the story and the genre.

Verdict:

Siren, as pointed out above, might have boasted the capability of being a compelling thriller at the script level, but those chances are squashed by the director's visionless treatment and an unimpressive leading man. And since a lot depends on these two factors in the case of an investigative thriller, the film is bound to end up a dud. The story in its own right has quite a few bright spots that reveal themselves on a couple of occasions but the overall execution is quite poor and underwhelming. Take a chance on this at your risk.