Critics reviews

As a crime mystery, Santosh isn’t always compelling. The twists and reveals are seldom surprising, so we rarely feel like we’re discovering things along with Santosh. But maybe Suri’s film isn’t designed to surprise us. Perhaps it wants to show us how unsurprising this all is, how easily a vulnerable person like Santosh can be recruited into the machine that oppresses her, and how difficult it is to live morally as a person trapped between so many forces and fault lines, with so little power. As a depiction of these bleak realities, then, Santosh is extremely effective.

For a noir film, there’s a surprising amount of light and bright colour employed... It has the effect of making the shadowy environments and murky morality all the more grubby. It’s not the corruption itself that proves to be the most damning element of Suri’s film - it’s the general acceptance of it that holds the sting.

This assured sense of direction coupled with controlled performances make Santosh a compelling drama. But it’s Suri’s screenplay that renders the film immersive. The director smartly imbues this low-key, intimate narrative with details that lay out the political reality of India.

“Santosh” plays out almost as a subversion of the standard police procedural... Without ever once overplaying its hand, it ensures the smallest act of resistance and compassion hits like a train.

[T]here’s nothing wistful or romantic in this hard-hitting story of disillusionment and compromise... If ‘Training Day with more grey areas’ sounds dull, it’s anything but.

Santosh can’t be classified as a traditional “police procedural”, a genre that typically shows an under-duress system that works effectively: it is a crime-drama, where moral culpability tarnishes everyone proximate to the case.

It’s a terrific feature debut from British-Indian documentary filmmaker Sandhya Suri – a propulsive neo-noir that holds up a mirror to contemporary India.

It’s here, in society’s subtle machinations and mediations, that Suri’s film thrives. Santosh is inundated with the swirl of sexism, corruption, politics, casteism — all hot-button issues in India, if not worldwide, but none of them mentioned by name.

While often more intellectually stimulating than emotionally engaging, “Santosh” lays bare the dark heart of communal divisions in modern India.