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'Deva' Movie Review: Shahid Kapoor Can't Save This Bollywood Cop-Out Of A Daring Malayalam Original
Filmmaker Rosshan Andrrews' 'Deva' is a tragic reflection of everything that's wrong with the Hindi film industry.
Director: Rosshan Andrrews
Writers: BobbyâSanjay, Abbas Dalal, Hussain Dalal, Arshad Syed, Sumit Arora
Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Pooja Hegde, Pavail Gulati
Language: Hindi
What do you call a film, which faithfully juices almost everything from a richer source material, packages it with better production value, overstuffs it with style, leaves out its beating heart, replaces vulnerability with machismo, and finally takes a cowardly turn for safer mass appeal? A Bollywood remake.
Filmmaker Rosshan Andrrews' Hindi film debut Deva is a tragic reflection of everything that's wrong with the Hindi film industry as the director's daring 2013 Malayalam original Mumbai Police is reduced to a hero-worshipping vehicle of cliches and boredom in a painful downgrade of a solid idea.
Deva features Shahid Kapoor as an angry, arrogant cop, trying to piece together a murder case. There is everything from goons and politicians to power play, police brutality and memory loss; all the ingredients are thrown into the mix, and once blended, the makers take a spoon from the batter and feed the audience.
It is hard to view Deva as a standalone film, even when one does want to do that, because it replicates key sequences, lines and, oddly, even the exact frames from the original. But what is crucially and infuriatingly left out are the punches and cleverness.
Deva, even without the awareness of the existence of Mumbai Police, feels like a low-stakes film. Except for a few sequences in which the film comes alive, the tension is never nail-biting, the reveals never jolting.
For a film named and centred around the titular character, Deva features a dĂŠjĂ vu Kapoor performance. But at this point, Kapoor, an extremely fine actor no doubt, needs an intervention. Surely there are newer ways of portraying "edgy" parts without using the crutches of smouldering looks, riding a Bullet, breaking the rules and turning a character into a walking-talking PSA of anti-smoking?
Prithviraj Sukumaran displayed that effectively in Mumbai Police. The reason why the comparison must be made is to point out the obviously flawed approach here. While the Malayalam film was in service of its character, the Hindi film is in service of the hero.
Whenever Kapoor drops the weight of being a hero and embraces vulnerability, he shines. But that doesn't happen often as Deva is singularly focused on putting him on a pedestal. He gets introduced with a classic Amitabh Bachchan song, and Kapoor dances, flexes, and has his moment. It is brief, but charming. The retro track, then, fades into the soundscape of another song. There is an introduction again, which is long, and frustrating. Kapoor dances and flexes, again.
Kapoor's Deva doesn't care about people around him, but neither does the film. No one matters, no one has a voice, no one is ever heard, and yet the film expects viewers to care about what happens to them.
It's disappointing, because performers like Pavail Gulati and Girish Kulkarni are never given the space to breathe. Gulati, at least in one scene, manages to remind us why he is such a dependable actor. Even Pooja Hegde, whose screen time is stunningly limited, shines in whatever she is allowed to do. But it's a pity that it's not much.
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Cinematographer Amit Roy films Mumbai well, giving it the dignity of an important character which witnesses shootouts, celebrations and betrayals. But for most of the runtime, which tests one's patience, the film rarely offers anything original. Everything is a drag, a been-there, seen-that act. Take this line for instance: When Deva asks his girlfriend why she loves him, she replies, "Besides your arrogance, grumpy face and anger issues, there's a child inside you... and I see that."
Is this Deva? Is this Kabir Singh? Is this Jersey? Maybe it's all of them. Who cares, it's a Shahid Kapoor showreel anyway.