
In his hero-entry scene in Deva, Shahid Kapoor, in a buzz cut and a stubble, thrusts his pelvis to ‘Are Diwano Mujhe Pehchano’ from Don (1978). In a mural, Amitabh Bachchan’s Vijay, another Salim-Javed anti-hero, lounges in the background. In the desperation to attain mass appeal, the angry young Bachchan has become the new cardboard cutout of every deviant and volatile protagonist in Hindi cinema.
In Jigra (2024), Alia Bhatt stuffs her mouth, prepping herself for an odyssey as Agneepath (1990) plays on TV. Ranbir Kapoor’s ‘Animal’ reveals his name to be Rann ‘Vijay’. Every creator seems to be showcasing their characters as the angry young men or women for the modern age. But nobody is imbibing its essence. In an interview, Javed Akhtar eloquently described his creation: “The angry young man wasn’t just angry. He was deeply hurt.” I don’t know what ails today’s on-screen rebel. What hurts him? Who is he angry with? What is he angry about?
Helmed by Rosshan Andrrews, Deva is a plain and convoluted restructuring of the director’s 2013 neo-noir psychological thriller Mumbai Police. Given the source material and leaving the PR aside (which projected Deva as a massy film), the movie was expected to be a nail-biting thriller. With an incessantly smoking Shahid, sporting shades and rugged jeans, Deva clings to the style as it jettisons the substance. It beats the barrel drum of its gritty sensibilities but quite soon the thrills at its centre start ringing hollow.
The case is solved when the film opens (but there is a catch). Dev Ambre (Shahid Kapoor) has found the killer of his friend and colleague Rohan D’Silva (Pavail Gulati), a gentle cop who was shot by an unknown sniper at a police felicitation event. Dev meets with an accident before he can reveal the culprit’s name to his senior Farhan Khan (Parvessh Rana).
Dev wakes up with amnesia, having no memory of either his or the murderer’s identity. As he starts piecing up the puzzle, the audience is introduced to Dev’s pre-accident, mercurial personality. He never dons the police uniform as he doesn’t want to malign the khaki while doing the cop’s ‘dirty work’. He sleeps around with a married woman. He is rude, arrogant and insubordinate but is tolerated by his colleagues and seniors because he is a sharp cop. Kabir Singh with a gun.
But Deva isn’t just a character study. It’s no ‘look-at-the-antics-of-this-animal’ cinema. In the footsteps of the 2013 Malayalam original Mumbai Police, it tries to be a riveting mystery, which heavily relies on the timely unravelling of the plot. Deva, however, is so unimaginatively arranged that it misses on the thrill train. In Mumbai Police, the viewers are as clueless as its amnesiac protagonist and things slowly fall into place.
But in Deva, the viewer is always ahead of the central character. The story unfolds plainly, the narrative is more slow than a slow-burn and the reveals are diluted. Mumbai Police questioned the allure of the macho cop and the toxicity of male friendships but Deva restrains itself to rebelling against ideology-less politicians. We also don’t spend time with the auxiliary characters to bond with them and thus motivations are half-baked and actions feel abrupt.
Deva completely rests on the shoulders of its lead Shahid Kapoor, who must be lauded for both his acting prowess and his choice of roles. And Shahid does try to lift up the sagging storytelling with his livewire acts but it isn’t enough. At a runtime of two hours and 36 minutes, Deva becomes dreary.
Upendra Limaye’s cameo as a sharpshooter (he also played the supremely entertaining guns dealer in Animal (2023)) is the highlight of the film. Pavail Gulati’s Rohan should have been the conscience, the beating heart of the film like his counterpart in Mumbai Police (Jayasurya) but it remains a stock character, nothing more than the hero’s best friend.
There is a feeble attempt in Deva to humanise its angry protagonist, to give a cause to this rebel. There are frequent mentions of how Dev put his own father behind jail, how his father once came back home drunk and broke his leg. Daddy issues as the reason behind flawed personalities has become passe. Dev sums it up perfectly when Rohan brings up his own disappointed father during an argument, “What dad, dad, dad you are crying about? Let all dads die.”
Film: Deva
Director: Rosshan Andrrews
Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Pavail Gulati, Pooja Hegde, Parvessh Rana
Rating: 2/5