Haiwaan – Review

quick review:

Makes you wish you could take some editorial calls to see if that made the movie better. At its current length and uneven pace though, it’d be wise to skip it unapologetically.

Streaming Partner: Sony Liv

Review

Scene after scene, I heard myself thinking, “At least, it’s not slapstick.” That tells you almost all you need to know about the film. Then one looooong scene tells you loud and clear that Priyadarshan cannot help himself. But you consider yourself lucky that he picked just that one scene for the supposed “humour” and milked the “joke” as much as was possible.

The tragedy is that the story wasn’t without potential. It, especially the second half, especially-especially the climax, is so drawn out that it makes you forget the merit of the plot. To top it off, some scenes feel amateurish in their execution. Like an extra pause between action and reaction or a character entering the scene a beat or more late.

This is not taking into account the usual tropes of songs being shoved in forcefully. Same goes for the social commentary such as religious harmony or police brutality or life philosophy. These concepts play disconnected cameos.

The uneven pace makes it even worse. The story is packed in the first half along with the song and dance. The second half feels like one long chase sequence. A chase so dry that the intermittent attempts at intelligent writing are wasted. So, is some of the character development.

The movie has quite a few characters, and some of them are interesting too. You get a peek into some of their lives through their situation and payoffs. On the flip side, none of them could be fleshed out properly because of the sheer number. So, throughout the film, you feel like this character might do something interesting or that character might bring solve this mystery. But, nothing of the sort happens.

Instead, the performances take a hit and almost all of them become monochromatic despite some depth to the characters. Starting with Saif Ali Khan and Akshay Kumar, most of the actors are off by a beat. There is something that gives away that they are putting on an act and are not living the character. Except for Saiyami Kher whose dialogue delivery couldn’t have been any more robotic, which is a shame because she is a good actor. Actually, there isn’t a single person in the cast who we haven’t seen give a brilliant performance elsewhere.

It’s been a while since I walked fresh into the theatre and came out feeling drained. And it’s not like we are being served brilliant movies Friday after Friday. I wish I could say that the tiredness is because the plot was complicated and the connections required me to stay wired. On the contrary, the lingering feeling is, “Say, what?” All that effort in writing sub-plot within irrelevant sub-plot and the main plot didn’t deserve half a thought?

– meeta, a part of the audience