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Shivaay movie review: Ajay Devgn film is a bloated star vehicle

Shivaay movie review: Ajay Devgn film is a monumental drag. While you think how much lower it can sink, it slips a few more notches.

Written by Shubhra Gupta | New Delhi | Updated: October 28, 2016 2:26 pm

Shivaay movie review: Ajay Devgn may be kitted out as Shivaay but he is still in Singham' mode.

Shivaay movie cast: Ajay Devgn, Sayyeshaa Saigal, Erika Kaar, Abigail Eames
Shivaay movie director: Ajay Devgn

Shivaay is a man of the mountains, fully alive only in their icy reaches. Then one day, love strikes, and everything changes.

Ajay Devgn's second directorial outing, in which he plays the In and As eponymous hero, sweeps us up on to craggy cliffs and down into deep crevasses, both in the Himalayas and in Bulgaria, and then leaves us high and dry. Well-made, this could have been a cross-continental film about filial love and romantic betrayal, but Shivaay' is a monumental near-three hour long drag, giving you too much empty time to wonder just how much lower it can sink, and the next thing you know, it slips a few more notches.

Shivaay movie review: Watch Ajay Devgn's Shivaay audience reaction

Devgn has played father to a little girl before, and done a serviceable job of it ( Main Aisa Hi Hoon'). He is, in fact, quite good around kids generally (Raju Chacha'). His first film as director tried exploring the thorny path those afflicted with Alzheimer's have to tread: it may not have been all the way successful, but it was a brave choice of subject. And he is one star who's never been afraid of underplaying, because that's how real actors roll.

Shivaay movie review: Watch Ajay Devgn on his movie, Shivaay

Here he abandons all actorly pretences and dons a dull superhero garb. He shares screen time with his speech impaired eight-year-old daughter (Abigail Eames) as he travels from a little hill town in India to Bulgaria in search of a woman (Erika Kaar) who abandoned them both. A clunky sub-plot involving violent child traffickers wearing creepy masks and a creepier old man come in the way, but Devgn is invincible and will brook no resistance.

Also read | Ae Dil Hai Mushkil vs Shivaay: How the films stack up against each other

And that's where the problem lies. Devgn employs all his too-familiar tricks (slo-mo walk, slit eyes, scything arms and legs) from his one man army south remakes, and makes us forget that he is trying for a character. All we see is a grim, unsmiling visage, with no hint of the vulnerability or humour that he has been capable of in his best parts. He may be kitted out as Shivaay but he is still in Singham' mode.

When Devgn steps off the screen, which is not for too long, on come a bunch of clueless people: an unintentionally hilarious 'ethical hacker' (Vir Das, having the most fun in the film), a corpulent diplomat who delivers lectures on the virtues of being a Bihari (Saurabh Shukla), a middle-aged man in a wheelchair (Girish Karnad, not quite sure what he is meant to do), and a pretty girl (Sayyeshaa Saigal) whose sole job description is to look upon the hero in wide-eyed adoration, when not thinking deeply in a bath-tub.

Also read | Ae Dil Hai Mushkil movie review: This brand new film feels same old

The only thing your eye can rest on is the spectacular scenery. The rest is a bloated star vehicle.

• Critic's Review
• Trivia / Goofs

'Shivaay': stylish with an archaic heart

• Namrata Joshi

There is a consistency of craft in Shivaay that is rarely seen in Hindi cinema. Like its relentless commitment towards slow motion. From the first shot to the last, everything moves s...l...o...w " the bullet that leaves the pistol to the teardrop that falls from the eye. No wonder the film turns out almost three hours long despite just a wisp of a story to tell.

Then there's Ajay Devgn in the titular role, a mountaineer who is perennially jumping off every cliff in any range in any part of the world. Otherwise he can be found smoking a chillum, extremely self-consciously at that, looking meaningfully at the audience as though telling them: stop me if you can. Well, he gets away with weed with the mythological sanction of Shiva behind him and the chants of Bolo har har har' egging him on. How then can the Censor Board point a disapproving finger?

There's more " the wintry grey-blue palette, the extreme close-ups especially of the eyes (remember Shiva's third eye) and the breathtakingly beautiful landscape " the lofty Himalayas and the pretty cobbled streets of Sofia in Bulgaria. And, for all the fans of action, there are long chases around the city landmarks, bloody fights, several dead bodies of Russians and Bulgarians and enough smashed cars to give Rohit Shetty a major inferiority complex, in not one but all his seven lives.

Welcome to the Ajay Devgn brand of stylish cinema. The kind that looks modish but sports a terribly archaic, outdated heart. Mountaineer Shivaay falls in love with Bulgarian Barbie doll-like beauty Olga (Erika Kaar) while trying to save her in a life-threatening avalanche. For a bit it made me get nostalgic about the shared socialist past of the two countries and how both have moved on but that would be a needless digression.

To come back to their romance, she gets turned on by his mythological tattoos, one right there tantalisingly on the chest, he kisses her ever so chastely that she decides to take charge and guess what happens next? A baby called Gaura (Abigail Eames) is born. Olga doesn't want to have the child, she has too many other responsibilities. Shivaay wants one because he has no one to call his own. So the lady leaves for her home and the single father brings up the daughter.

Much later in the film Olga is made to feel the "guilt" as Shivaay delivers her a moral science lecture on motherhood. After all, no woman can ever be "complete" without experiencing the divine maternal joy, isn't it (sarcasm very much intended)!

That's not all. There's more " a Russian child trafficking racket in Bulgaria in which Shivaay and Gaura get trapped. Then there are two other needless subplots involving father-daughter duos (this could well turn out to be the Beti Bachao year for Bollywood) and an ethical hacker (Vir Das) for comic relief. All eventually does end well as Shivaay kills the main baddie in the Bulgarian equivalent of Kailash Parbat with an icicle trishul to the background score of Ja ja Kailash, ja kar vinaash.'

For some strange reason, while all Bulgarians, including the fickle mom and the several ugly villains are bad, all the individuals of Indian/subcontinental descent are nice human beings. Clearly, the Bulgarians did not know what they were in for or they just decided to bear with it for the sake of economics. For if this can lead to an increase in film shoots and in the inflow of Indian tourists to their country, well then why not?

Originally posted by: _fillintheblank

off topic

the funny updates on SHIVAAY

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtI3Nv9X7RM[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUS0vG0937Q[/YOUTUBE]

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