In his eighth collaboration with the actor, director Ranjit Shankar draws on the experiences of the pandemic to tell the story of a man for whom the virus is the least of his worries.
If making the protagonist believable is something that can help a film connect effectively with its audience, sunny There is something very concerning to begin with in this pandemic era. The quarantine experience forced by COVID-19 is something that would be easy for many to recognize. Sunny (Jayasuriya) has come back to Kerala from a stint in the Middle East, and checks into a high-end hotel to spend his mandatory quarantine period.
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But this is where the relatable part ends, for Sunny is the one who is troubled by the truckload of problems an average human being has to face. Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong in the life of this down-and-coming businessman, who is also a part-time musician. He faces huge debt after a friend cheated on him, his marriage is on the rocks, and he struggles with a drinking problem that could threaten his life.
sunny
- Director: Ranjit Shankari
- Cast: Jayasuriya
- Story: The life of a failed musician, Sunny is smuggled back from Dubai to Kerala amid a global pandemic, and isolates himself from society
- Duration: 1 hour 33 minutes
In his eighth collaboration with Jayasuriya, director Ranjit Shankar draws on the experiences of the pandemic to tell the story of a man for whom the virus is his least concern. An element of mystery initially surrounds Sunny, who is shown burning her passport as she lands. We begin to slowly put the pieces together from the phone calls he makes, and his conversations with a woman who lives on the floor above him, whose face is only partially shown. Sunny is the only lead character to appear on screen, with the rest making their presence felt through the voices of a few well-known actors.
In his early days inside the hotel, one gets an impression that Sunny’s character is a continuation of Jayasuriya’s previous outing as an alcoholic Murali. vellumexcept his financial condition. He is hallucinating and isolating, increasing the problem with detachment. But with the extent of his problems slowly coming to the fore, we also imagine that the director is setting it all up for an inspiring film in these rough times.
Though Jayasuriya somehow manages to keep the interest alive while portraying Sunny’s sudden ups and downs, the script – which has an easy way to go about it – doesn’t really do that. It seems designed to magically solve all her problems, just as she piled on all these issues on one person at the same time in her life. But the conflict or the resolution never manages to create any hope to draw in the viewer, who can watch it all with a sense of detachment. Despite the rising background score on the key points, the script is such that the film never rises above average territory.
Sunny is currently streaming on Amazon Prime
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