Ronth – A Gritty, Unflinching Portrait of the Everyday Cop

Shahi Kabir has always known where to look, not at the big crimes or action-packed investigations, but at the ordinary people wearing the uniform, who are swallowed daily by silence, duty, and systemic rot.

After Joseph, and especially the quietly devastating Nayattu, Ronth cements himself as one of Malayalam cinema’s most quietly political storytellers, but never preachy. Always grounded. Always real.

Spoiler Alert

The core of Ronth is the uneasy relationship between the seasoned SI Yohannan (Dileesh Pothan) and his junior, Dinnath (Roshan Mathew). Lakshmi Menon plays Salomi, Yohannan’s wife, whose own tragic backstory lingers quietly, shaping Yohannan’s withdrawn and bitter persona. Shahi Kabir doesn’t shout these pasts into the screen; he lets them trickle through fragments of dialogue, silences, and glances.

As the two officers begin their night patrol, the screenplay slips into a procedural rhythm. This is not the glossy cop thriller with heroic punches and flashy action.

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Instead, we see the monotony, the futility, the unpredictable chaos from petty squabbles to full-blown emergencies. A woman goes missing, a mentally unstable man causes a scene, and each incident nudges the viewer deeper into the abyss that is the real Indian policing system.

Shahi Kabir’s background in the police force brings an uncanny authenticity to Ronth. The dialogues feel overheard rather than written, and the power equations feel lived-in, drawing out the ideological and emotional conflict within state machinery without ever making it overt.

Roshan Mathew delivers one of his finest tour de force yet. And Dileesh Pothan, what a performance. He doesn’t act so much as exist on screen. Yohannan is not a bad man. He’s just done. Worn out by life. There’s a heart-wrenching bit where we learn about his child dying when his wife was nine months pregnant. That scene… no drama, just storytelling that makes your chest hurt.

There’s no single plot in Ronth. It’s more like real life, messy, unpredictable, and unjust. Someone dies. Someone runs away. And in all this, police officers like Dinnath and Yohannan, with their own pasts, pain, and pressures, are expected to just keep going.

Here and there, Shahi Kabir doesn’t forget to highlight the harsh reality of how the police system treats its officers, with barely enough facilities, old vehicles, and low pay. Through Dileesh Pothan’s dialogues, this harsh truth is brought out loud and clear.

Technically, the film is subtle and strong. Manesh Madhavan’s cinematography captures the shadows of the night with a tired eye. Anil Johnson’s background score knows when to stay silent. The editing doesn’t cut for style, it lingers when needed, pulls away when it must. It all serves the story.

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There’s a haunting moment where Dileesh Pothan tells Roshan, as police officers, the image of a dead body never really leaves our minds… until we see the next one. It’s a line spoken quietly, almost like an afterthought, but it carries the weight of years, grief that is seen, buried, and replaced again and again. Told, yet deeply untold.

After enduring it all, the chaos, the trauma, the sleepless nights, the police officers who gave everything are left to be scapegoats in a corrupt system. The climax doesn’t just end the story; it leaves you sitting in their pain, helpless and shattered, haunted by the silence that follows honest work, punished.

Shahi Kabir never writes to please; his endings don’t offer closure, but always haunt. His climaxes leave you unsettled, holding the weight of what’s real, not what’s right. Thus, the film concludes on a quiet, suffocating note of helplessness, leaving the audience with heavy hearts as they exit the theatre.

Timeline Verdict:

Ronth is a film that makes you sit with discomfort, with silence, and with the ugly truth that good men, in broken systems, often lose, and Shahi Kabir cements his place as one of the most important chroniclers of the human cost of law enforcement. Raw, intense, and devastatingly real.

Cast:

• Roshan Mathew

• Dileesh Pothan

• Lakshmi Menon

• Arun Cherukavil

• Sudhi Koppa

• Krisha Kurup

• Rajesh Madhavan

• Carmen S Mathew

• Jincy

• Baby Nandhootty

• Roshan Abdul Rahoof

• Nandhan Unni

Crew:

Director:
Shahi Kabir

Writer:
Shahi Kabir

Producers:

• Rathish Ambat (Producer)

• Vineet Jain (Producer)

• Jojo Jose (Producer)

• E.V.M. Renjith (Producer)

• Kalpesh Damani (Associate Producer)

• Amrita Pandey (Co-Producer)

Composer:
Anil Johnson

Cinematographer:
Manesh Madhavan