Safe Review: this movie does a disservice to the cause

The Jayaraj directorial vigilante thriller 4 the people had an ambitious idea attached along with it which made the movie a huge hit along with the Lajjavathiye song. The makers of the new movie Safe is somewhere aspiring to recreate the same kind of magic. But they are not at all interested in doing some basic research about what they are talking about. The ideas like women's safety app and venomous use of social media are presented in the tackiest way possible.

Shreya Sreedharan, the new deputy commissioner of police is in the investigation of a high profile human trafficking case. While she was doing the investigation, she had to undergo a lot of stressful situations. In a parallel track, we have an activist named Arundhathi creating an App named Safe to make women safe when they are physically abused. There is a connection between the intent of both Shreya and Arundhathi. The movie Safe, explores that area.

The director has used a different actor to show us the recent past of almost all the major characters in the movie that happens in a flashback sequence. But the illogical part was that only one member never aged. Just when I was wondering why such a blunder in a movie like this, the makers added a Mission Impossible like twist, making it even more bizarre. The scriptwriter has the vague idea of “why can’t we use an app to save women from sexual abuse?” But the issue is that he hasn’t really given a time and space for that idea to develop. Maybe he realized the foolishness of the idea which lead to the quote we see at the end of the film saying that this is just a rough idea, you all can take inspiration to make it practical.

Anusree as Arundhathi has the grace to be the leader of the gang even though the lines given to her are extremely lame. Aparna Gopinath is also struggling with a character that is written so badly. She is trying to internalize a pain that doesn’t feel like a pain due to the tacky presentation. Siju Wilson is there in a meaty pointless role. Aji John’s caricature villain is laughable and the roles played by the producers also offer unintended comedy due to the flawed dialogue delivery. None of the members of the Safe team lived up to the expectation. 

Adding authenticity or believability to the content is not the agenda of the writer Pradeep Kalipurayathu. The solution they are providing through the app they are showing in the movie is a total breach of privacy and its quite clear that the writer doesn’t have any clue about the concept of social media privacy. The over the top script gets treated in a much-compromised way. That CCTV footage sequence from the bus clearly shows how less planned this movie was. The cinematography was on the okay side and the visual effects are far too sophisticated.

Women Safety is still a burning issue in this society. So the makers of Safe will claim that their movie is socially relevant. But what these people are not realizing is that by making more and more tacky movies on a very relevant subject, they are doing a disservice to the cause.