Street Lights Review: A neatly made thriller that’s worth a watch!

Mammootty’s first outing of the year Street Lights is an investigative thriller. The movie marks the directorial debut of cinematographer Shamdat Sainudeen. Made as a bilingual in Tamil and Malayalam, the movie has a different set of actors for each version. Let’s see how Street Lights has turned out to be.

Street Lights has a simple plot and a complex setting. The plot takes off after three thieves – Raju, Sachi and Murugan – steal an expensive necklace worth Rs 5 crores. Crime branch police officer James takes it up as an unofficial case, which is off the record. He has an interesting past and then there is three other major characters – Remya, her cousin Sharaf and a school going young boy, Mani. All these characters are somehow connected to inspector James. How he encounters all their lives and finally succeeds in his mission forms the core plot.

First things first, Street Lights is not just another star vehicle. It is not a hero-centric film with many hero glorification elements. The characters here stay true to the plot at most occasions. Debutant Fawaz Mohamed has developed a neat script with enough entertaining elements to please a commoner. Though the movie lacks the ‘thrill’ element as it follows a predictable nature after a point, it still manages to keep the audience engaged. Due credits to the director and his writer for that. But, they could have easily done away with the forced action sequences.

On the performance side, Mammootty was at his usual best in a not-so challenging role. The way he delivers fluent Tamil dialogues in the latter half is a delight to watch. It was very heartening to see such a big star like him giving so much space for other actors as well. All the supporting actors – Lijomol Jose, Soubin Shahir, the child actor Adhish, Hareesh Kanaran, Stunt Silva and Motta Rajendran justified their casting, delivering the goods without any major fuss.

On the technical front, the cinematography by Sadat Sainudeen was slick. Adarsh Abraham’s songs were good, especially the Tamil track. Manoj has done a good job by editing the movie to just around 2 hours.

Overall, Street Lights is an entertaining movie with its fair share of thrill, humour and poignancy.