The Ride Movie 2025 Bappamtv Review Details

The Ride Review – Director Ka Vision Ekdum Next Level!

Having seen directors come and go over 18 years, you recognize a confident voice when you hear it. Ritesh Menon’s vision in ‘The Ride’ isn’t just about making a thriller; it’s about redefining tension within four wheels. This is a film where the director’s hand is firm on the wheel, navigating a tricky path with stunning precision. Salaam, Ritesh Menon!

Directorial Choices: Confidence in Constraint

Menon’s boldest choice is embracing the constraint. One car, two main characters, a night-long journey. Instead of feeling stagey, it becomes intensely cinematic. His decision to rely on actor close-ups and ambient sound over bombastic music shows immense trust in his material and cast. The pacing is clinical—a slow-burn start that methodically tightens the screws before the interval bang explodes.

Insight: Menon understands that real fear is a slow leak, not a burst tyre. He lets the anxiety seep into you.

Signature Style: Emerging from the Shadows

While this is a breakout, a signature style is clear: psychological realism over melodrama, environment as a narrative force, and performances stripped to the bone. There’s a documentarian’s eye for detail—the grime on the dashboard, the specific fatigue in a driver’s eyes. It feels less directed and more observed, which makes the eventual plunge into chaos utterly devastating.

Takeaway: This could be the birth of a new voice in neo-noir thrillers, one rooted in Malayalam cinema’s celebrated realism.

Influences & Easter Eggs: A Cinephile’s Ride

You can spot the DNA of classics like ‘Locke’ (single location drama) and Tamil masterpieces like ‘Aaranya Kaandam’ (gritty, unpredictable narrative). There’s also a dash of the Coen brothers’ sense of absurd fate. A subtle easter egg? The radio news snippets playing in the background often foreshadow the film’s themes of chance and accident, a brilliant touch for repeat viewers.

Director’s Journey: Comparing The Ride to Past Work

Film/Project	Scale & Genre	Evolution Seen in ‘The Ride’
Ritesh Menon’s Earlier Shorts	Smaller, character sketches	Mastery over sustained feature-length tension
Typical Malayalam Thrillers	Often exterior, plot-heavy	Focus on interiority & psychological depth
Industry Standard	Reliance on twists	Trust in atmospheric dread over cheap shocks

Cast Chemistry Under Direction: Forged in Confinement

Menon’s biggest win is extracting career-best work from Sudhi Koppa and Ann Sheethal. The direction seems to have been about creating a high-trust, high-pressure environment off-camera to mirror the on-screen one. Their chemistry isn’t romantic; it’s a volatile, shifting equation of dependency and suspicion. You believe every second of their shared journey because the director made the space real for them.

Insight: Great direction is about curation and environment. Menon curated perfect cast and then locked them into the film’s reality.

Future Potential: What’s Next for this Vision?

Potential Path	Opportunity	Risk to Avoid
Bigger Budget Thrillers	Apply this tense style to a heist or conspiracy plot	Losing the intimate character focus
Anthology Series	Excel in episodic, tense storytelling (e.g., a Netflix series)	Formulaic repetition of the ‘journey’ trope
Producer for New Voices	Nurture similar gritty, realistic thrillers in the industry	Spreading his own vision too thin

FAQs About The Director’s Craft

Question → Is this Ritesh Menon’s debut film?
Answer → While he has directed shorts, ‘The Ride’ is being treated as his major feature-film directorial debut, and what a stunning announcement it is!

Question → Does the film feel slow because of the single location?
Answer → Absolutely not. The direction uses the limitation to create claustrophobia and relentless focus. The pace is taut and nerve-wracking.

Question → Will this style work for a mass audience?
Answer → It’s working already! It’s massy in its emotion and relatable tension, not in slow-motion heroism. It connects dil se.

Ratings are purely my take after multiple watches — aapka experience alag ho sakta hai!