SHIVAAY (U/A)

Director: Ajay Devgn

Cast: Ajay Devgn, Sayyeshaa Saigal, Erika Kaar, Abigail Eames, Girish Karnad, Vir Das

Running time: 173 minutes

Girl: You call yourself Shivaay. Are you anything like Shiva?

Boy: Smiles a half smile and points to a Shiva tattoo on his epilated chest. 

Girl: Uses her right hand to gesture a cobra’s hood.

Boy: Smiles a half smile and points to a serpent tattoo on his muscular arm. 

Girl: Trishul hai?

Boy: Smiles a half smile, takes off his shirt and shows off a trishul tattoo on his glistening back.

Girl: Sizes him up and down and smiles as she falls silent. 

Boy: Smiles a half smile and nods his head slightly. 

But before you can sit up and think: ‘What?! A Bollywood film where the hero and heroine are having a conversation with phallic overtones!!’ you wind up at the next scene where the two are having U/A sex… with clothes on!  

And well, this is one of the many WTF moments that pepper the length — 173 minutes of torture — and breadth — bloated and self-indulgent — of Shivaay, one of the two big Diwali releases, this one marking the return of Ajay Devgn to the director’s chair eight years after his debut in the box-office dud U Me Aur Hum. 

And Shivaay plays out like a dud with a thud… a spectacle that justifies its Rs 105 crore budget, but is nowhere close to spectacular cinema. It’s a film where Devgn seems to exist in a parallel universe where everything revolves around him. So it’s superhero Devgn jumping from one precarious Himalayan peak to another without as much as a harness; romantic Devgn flooring a Bulgarian belle with one stare through his droopy eyes; doting dad Devgn who runs amok through half of Sofia, killing at will, to rescue his eight-year-old from the clutches of traffickers. He’s sometimes Usain Bolt, sometimes Simone Biles, but most often he’s the Invincible Bollywood Hero. In fact, Devgn’s Shivaay is so obsessed with himself that he constantly refers to himself in the third person. All of which leads to laugh-out-loud moments, all unintentional of course. 

Like the sex scene where Shivaay, a mountain guide with invincible strength and superhuman agility, leads Bulgarian student Olga (played by Polish actress Erika Kaar, who is made to mouth unintelligible Hindi) on an expedition that goes awry. The two end up suspended in a tent between two rocky precipices, there is an avalanche afoot and her leg is broken. But nothing should come in the way of sex. Yes, in that tent midair... yes, with a broken leg... yes, with the mountains crumbling around them. And remember, there’s 172 more minutes of WTF in Devgn’s universe.

And yet, Shivaay starts off with quite a bit of promise. Cinematographer Aseem Bajaj makes the mountains come alive, treating the viewer to a spectacular opening sequence where Shivaay, a chillum-smoking daredevil, executes a jaw-dropping stunt that runs well into five minutes. An orphan, Shivaay calls the mountains his home and promptly falls for the doe-eyed Olga. A romp later, she’s pregnant, but she doesn’t want the child. His solution? Have the kid and leave… “kyunki aadhi family bhi mujhe manzoor hai”. 

Eight years later, Gaura the kid (played by Abigail Eames) has a speech impairment, but her stubborn desire to meet her mother means Bajrangi Bhaijaan’s Mission Pakistan is Shivaay’s Mission Bulgaria. So the two wing off to Bulgaria, but within a day of landing there, Gaura is kidnapped by a gang of masked traffickers. And then begins a cross-country race, with Shivaay on a Liam Neeson mission: “I will find them and I will kill them!”

Taken was campy fun, Shivaay anything but. As the body count keeps piling, things get more and more ridiculous by the minute — a Serbian sex worker in Sofia speaks chaste Hindi, the trafficking kingpin listens to opera music the whole day and an Indian embassy employee (Anushka, played by debutant Sayyeshaa Saigal), who helps out Shivaay, is given a five-minute-long sequence in a bathtub where her thoughts centred around her physically challenged father (Girish Karnad in a role so inane you could cry) suddenly turn into fantasies about Shivaay! Yes, WTF moment number 610.

And every time you cry foul whenever India’s poverty porn is peddled in foreign cinema, spare a thought for the Bulgarians in Shivaay, tarred as they all are by the same brush — from a mother painted as cold and unfeeling for leaving her child behind to every man on the street who, in Shivaay universe, is branded either a thug or trafficker. 

In the middle of it all stands Devgn, who rarely leaves the screen even for a moment. Bullets fly past him, his superhuman strength results in him slaughtering armies of men single-handedly and at one point, he ejects himself out of a plunging car vertically… gravity, what’s that?!

Which is a pity because the man who has given us many a winning film through his 25-year career puts his heart and soul into Shivaay, but it doesn’t come together at any point. Devgn looks like he’s on a perpetual chillum trip, but Shivaay never achieves a high. Narrative logic is absent, Devgn’s obsession with himself means that the rest of the characters are under-sketched. Though Mithoon’s music — especially Darkhaast and Raatein — and the camerawork deserve an A+, there is just too little in Shivaay that will not make you yawn your eyes out. 

Wonder what was in that chillum pipe Devgn was smoking through the film? Yes, statutory warning: watch at your own risk. 


Shivaay is a Diwali dud/dhamaal? 
Tell t2@abp.in