‘Yudhra’ Review: A Film With Too Much Rage, Too Little Substance

Director: Ravi Udyawar
Writer: Shridhar Raghavan
Cast: Siddhant Chaturvedi, Malavika Mohanan, Raj Arjun, Raghav Juyal, Gajraj Rao, Ram Kapoor, Shilpa Shukla
Language: Hindi

Yudhra is the kind of film in which a lollipop is used as a weapon, which is to say that director Ravi Udyawar has little interest in logic or reality. His greatest concern is style — the way in which Yudhra, the horrifically angry, mele-mein-bichda-hua-bhai of Kabir Singh, is silhouetted against the sun, holding a gun, standing on a container as he apprehends the bad guy. Or the way in which a vase of roses explodes in slow motion during a gunfight and petals are strewn across a bathroom. Two even artfully land on a character’s shoulders. Or the way in which a key action sequence is placed in a music shop in Portugal, so blood splatters from a brain onto a poster of Beethoven, and a character uses a mic cord to strangle an attacker.

All of which would be impressive if it was tethered to a story that was coherent or emotionally resonant. But Yudhra is largely a series of choreographed set pieces strung together like mismatched beads in a necklace. One minute, Yudhra is arrested for racing motorbikes on busy Mumbai streets; the next, he’s enrolled in the National Cadet Training Academy. Soon after, he’s offered an anti-narcotics assignment because, as a character says, “isko risks lena pasand hai”(“He likes taking risks”). The blunt dialogue is used as a band-aid to cover the glaring gaps in the story. So, a character is described as ‘sabse bada drug dealer’, a jail is described as ‘sabse khatarnak jail’. Why show when you can tell?

What’s surprising is that this threadbare writing comes from a team that’s done far superior work — the story has been written by Shridhar Raghavan (who has set up the spy universe at Yash Raj Films with films such as War, Pathaan and Tiger 3), and the dialogue has been written by Farhan Akhtar (also a co-producer on the film) and Akshat Ghildial, who wrote both Badhaai Ho and Badhaai Do. In an interview, Udyawar said that when Akhtar and Raghavan first narrated the story, he knew it has something very Shakespearean. I don’t think so.

The heavy lifting is done by Siddhant Chaturvedi, who plays the titular character. He is a fine actor who, as we saw in Gehraiyaan, knows how to dial up the moral murkiness while still maintaining the high-beam charm. But here, he alternates between three modes — swagger, smirk and scowl. Udyawar showcases his impressive physicality; one action sequence has him in boxers and a bathrobe. He also gets to show off his dancing skills in a club number. Chaturvedi, as Yudhra, kills many men stylishly and, at one point, even rubs hot coal on his face to show his rivals how tough he is. But the unrelenting, unhinged posturing quickly becomes tedious.

The other actors have even less to work with. Raghav Juyal, who was terrific in Kill, ramps up the psycho note, but the character is so poorly written that his clothes — in one scene, he wears an impressive overcoat with fur trimmings — make more of an impression. Ram Kapoor and Gajraj Rao, also fine actors, largely ham. Malavika Mohanan, making her Hindi debut, is feeble. The one saving grace is Raj Arjun as the deadly drug dealer Firoz. He summons up enough menace.

Somewhere inside this bloated, boring film is a better one that weaves together family, tragedy and violence. Sadly, Udyawar wasn’t able to find it.