Anupama Chopra reviews Haiwaan, Priyadarshan's Hindi remake of his own 2016 Malayalam hit Oppam, starring Saif Ali Khan and Akshay Kumar, for The Hollywood Reporter India. Priyadarshan recreates the original almost frame by frame, but what was gripping and believable ten years ago now plays as far-fetched, and Anupama's argument is about why: in Malayalam, Mohanlal's blind lift operator felt organic because the storytelling stayed naturalistic, while in Hindi everything gets scaled up, from the modest building that becomes imposing towers with a pool to a blind caretaker who can solve water-tank issues and murders, wrestle, sing and dance.
Saif is a terrific actor but miscast as Shyam, and Akshay, credit to him for breaking his virtuous-hero image, plays the unhinged Parshuram in the broadest way possible, glaring and laughing maniacally in a way that makes it hard to believe he can slip in and out of a building complex unnoticed, saddled with dialogue straight out of the 80s.
Anupama places the film in the tradition of blind heroes made extraordinary by their sightlessness, from Daredevil to Kaabil, and notes it borrows Wait Until Dark's break-the-lights move, but what should have been a suspenseful saga of crime and punishment stays largely tedious, and that is the THR Bottomline. Haiwaan is now in theatres.
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