Commendable performances from Vijayaraghavan, Suresh Krishna kept things flowing. I wouldn't say its his best performance till date, thats still set aside to his performance as J C Daniel in Celluloid. Despite the quasi-star-studded cast of the movie, the sole spotlight was on Prithviraj and he effortlessly handled his role of Alex. The second half was more akin to a true whodunnit mystery which keeps you guessing till its revelation in the finale. And among all that, there was barely a boring scene anywhere which keeps things intriguing.
The pacing was at its finest in Memories allocating equal time for character development and, in its second half, where it transitions into a good thriller. Its been marketed as a psychological thriller, it is definitely a thriller but hardly psychological (an exception being the main antagonist). The first half of the movie effectively portrays how much distress Sam was in and in the second act the narrative smoothly slides into the investigative mode.
Though in a nutshell, it's about a tragedy-stricken, alcoholic police officer named Sam Alex who's shoved into investigating a series of murder cases. The lesser you know about Memories the better experience it'd be. Memories uncannily stands out among the recent hyped releases from Ranjith, Lal Jose and Samir Thahir, and with good reason. I mean I knew he had skills, evident from his other movies, but Memories turned out to be quite a welcome change from his recent flicks. It was quite unexpected for me that he's come up with a movie with such a gripping and entertaining plot. Memories, is a noteworthy movie that comes from Jeethu Joseph who previously gave us the mediocre yet entertaining My Boss, Mummy & Me and Detective. Overall, director Joseph's narration maintains a good hold over his narration with a killer climax in the end, making the film a must watch.
The others are good and Prithviraj churns out yet another brilliant performance after a spate of his marvelous performances in films like "Celluloid" and 'Mumbai Police", which has shades of Aamir Khan (Sarfarosh and Talaash), Shahrukh Khan (Devdas) and Abhay Deol (Dev D). In the performances, Mia George, Srijeeth Ravi and Vijayaraghavan are brilliant. The flaw in the film, lies in the melodrama, the dialogue scenes which could have been crisper and the visual effects which actually somewhere, look a bit awkward. The cinematography by Sujith Vaassudev is brilliant.
The Film is indeed one of the brilliant Indian thrillers made till date with a tinge of romance, drama and neo noir by director Jeethu Joseph (shares my birthday!) after giving all hit films "Detective" (2007), "Mummy and Me" (2010) and "My Boss" (2012) in his career which has shades of films like "Windstruck" (Korea/2004) and "Talaash" (2012) which scores full marks in it's original and taut screenplay (Joseph), the characters who are warm and humane, the brilliant editing by John Kutty which plays a pivotal role in maintaining the chills and thrills in some of the scenes brilliantly edited by him and the music score by Sejo John and Anil Johnson which is equally pivotal and instrumental as the editing in the film.