Movie Review: Shivaay – Only For The Hard-Core Action Lover
Originally published on Follo.in
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Somewhere in the first half of Shivaay, there is a scene where Saurabh Shukla tries to evoke laughter cracking jokes about his Bihari origins. You won’t laugh one bit. That’s indication enough that something is amiss. There has to be something wrong when an actor like Saurabh Shukla fails to make you laugh.
That Shivaay is low on emotions is an understatement. It fails to generate any kind of feelings towards the characters. While there are no comic scenes apart from the mentioned Saurabh Shukla bit, Shivaay is aimed at being an emotional action drama. It is after all about a father’s fight for his daughter’s life. It’s about a man who has no other family but his eight-year-old daughter, one who he could kill for! Needless to say, the man’s name is Shivaay.
What adds to the problems is that the film is low on reasoning too. Logic clearly does not fall into the necessary parameters while writing for Bollywood. A country presses charges against an Indian tourist and the police do not even bother checking with the Indian embassy to verify details. Failure to justify key plot points exposes the paper-thin screenplay of Shivaay.
Shivaay (Ajay Devgn) is a man from the Himalayas. He is a daredevil Sherpa. In one of his excursions, he meets Olga, a Bulgarian who is in India for studies. Olga leaves India soon after, leaving him their child Gaura. When Gaura is eight years old she finds her mother is alive and had abandoned her. She and her father Shivaay heads to Bulgaria to meet Olga once. Hell breaks loose when Olga gets kidnapped in Bulgaria.
The hitches are difficult to overlook. Yet, if you manage to look beyond this and are an out and out action fan, Shivaay has a whole lot of it to keep you enthralled. Shot exquisitely, using locations to the best, Shivaay is packed with awe-inducing action. Ajay Devgn as the action hero rarely fails, especially when he is set to raise the bar higher. So we have long stretched car chases, the lead man fall of mountains with élan, hand to hand combats and more. All of these are dealt with a precision that has been seen in few Bollywood films before. The technical team – cinematographer Aseem Bajaj, editor Dharmendra Sharma, action directors Peter Fernandes and Junaid Sheikh, and the VFX team – have delivered.
The film belongs to Ajay Devgn. He runs, grunts, punches, kicks… and even kisses. The actor-director does not leave any stone unturned when it comes to executing what he has. Young Abigail Eames as the daughter does really well as a mute eight-year-old. Mute not because it plays an important part in the film – like in the case of Bajrangi Bhaijaan – but clearly because that saves them the arduous task of teaching the young child how to speak Hindi. That task they sparingly manage with Erika Kaar, who plays the love interest who leaves Shivaay. Debutante Sayyeshaa barely has much to do. Her part involves taking a dip into a bathtub and thinking hard.
Shivaay is miserably let down by writing. Also, you can’t help noticing the fact that possibly this was too big a film for Ajay to have helmed, considering he was also required to be on screen. A separate director could have worked things far better. Nevertheless, what Ajay Devgn puts in is unmissable. If you are an action freak, you will love what action Shivaay has to offer… as long as you do not start asking questions related to logic.
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Somewhere in the first half of Shivaay, there is a scene where Saurabh Shukla tries to evoke laughter cracking jokes about his Bihari origins. You won’t laugh one bit. That’s indication enough that something is amiss. There has to be something wrong when an actor like Saurabh Shukla fails to make you laugh.
That Shivaay is low on emotions is an understatement. It fails to generate any kind of feelings towards the characters. While there are no comic scenes apart from the mentioned Saurabh Shukla bit, Shivaay is aimed at being an emotional action drama. It is after all about a father’s fight for his daughter’s life. It’s about a man who has no other family but his eight-year-old daughter, one who he could kill for! Needless to say, the man’s name is Shivaay.
What adds to the problems is that the film is low on reasoning too. Logic clearly does not fall into the necessary parameters while writing for Bollywood. A country presses charges against an Indian tourist and the police do not even bother checking with the Indian embassy to verify details. Failure to justify key plot points exposes the paper-thin screenplay of Shivaay.
Shivaay (Ajay Devgn) is a man from the Himalayas. He is a daredevil Sherpa. In one of his excursions, he meets Olga, a Bulgarian who is in India for studies. Olga leaves India soon after, leaving him their child Gaura. When Gaura is eight years old she finds her mother is alive and had abandoned her. She and her father Shivaay heads to Bulgaria to meet Olga once. Hell breaks loose when Olga gets kidnapped in Bulgaria.
The hitches are difficult to overlook. Yet, if you manage to look beyond this and are an out and out action fan, Shivaay has a whole lot of it to keep you enthralled. Shot exquisitely, using locations to the best, Shivaay is packed with awe-inducing action. Ajay Devgn as the action hero rarely fails, especially when he is set to raise the bar higher. So we have long stretched car chases, the lead man fall of mountains with élan, hand to hand combats and more. All of these are dealt with a precision that has been seen in few Bollywood films before. The technical team – cinematographer Aseem Bajaj, editor Dharmendra Sharma, action directors Peter Fernandes and Junaid Sheikh, and the VFX team – have delivered.
The film belongs to Ajay Devgn. He runs, grunts, punches, kicks… and even kisses. The actor-director does not leave any stone unturned when it comes to executing what he has. Young Abigail Eames as the daughter does really well as a mute eight-year-old. Mute not because it plays an important part in the film – like in the case of Bajrangi Bhaijaan – but clearly because that saves them the arduous task of teaching the young child how to speak Hindi. That task they sparingly manage with Erika Kaar, who plays the love interest who leaves Shivaay. Debutante Sayyeshaa barely has much to do. Her part involves taking a dip into a bathtub and thinking hard.
Shivaay is miserably let down by writing. Also, you can’t help noticing the fact that possibly this was too big a film for Ajay to have helmed, considering he was also required to be on screen. A separate director could have worked things far better. Nevertheless, what Ajay Devgn puts in is unmissable. If you are an action freak, you will love what action Shivaay has to offer… as long as you do not start asking questions related to logic.
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