Film Review - Tevar

The Tevaring Inferno

Film: Tevar

Cast: Arjun Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha, Manoj Bajpayee

Directed by: Amit Ravindernath Sharma

Duration: 2 hrs 37 mins

Rating: * 1 / 2 

Just about everything about Tevar is outdated and above everything else, it is the story. A good guy saving the heroine who is on the run from goons is so passé making you wonder why on earth this film was made in the first place. It is a big budget production and considerable money has been blown on lavish décor. In fact the electricity used to light up the sets itself could easily finance a couple of Indie films.

Not even a fraction of the moolah has been spent on writing a decent story, there are clichés after clichés and you don’t have to be a Bollywood aficionado to predict what is coming next. This is an old fashioned 80’s kind of movies with over the top scenes, lots of songs and a considerable long running length which leaves you exasperated by the end. 

Set in Agra, Pintu (Arjun Kapoor) is a young smug who is also an ace kabaddi player. This is one of those films where the hero doesn’t sit inside a bus to make a journey, he stands on it to show what a brash he is. After all, as he says, he is a Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Salman all rolled in one.

Meanwhile there is a damsel in distress, a Mathura girl Radhika (Sonakshi Sinha) is on the run because the Home Ministers brother (Manoj Bajpayee) is forcibly trying to rescue her. No prizes for guessing who saves her from the clutches, but it is all so very contrived that you are least interested in the proceedings.

There is a fair bit of jaw and breaking violence in the film and at some point even you start feeling the pain - in one scene, the hero ties a big stone to a rope and swings it around hammering the bad guys. 

This is a remake of the Telugu film Okkadu (2003) and this strange and inexplicable fascination for South Indian action films continues.

Some scenes have flair but on the whole the ratio of what you like and what you despise is very poor.  On the acting front, Arjun Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha are passable, there is nothing much to write about them. Manoj Bajpayee is the only silver lining in this otherwise dark cloud, he plays the villain with absolute conviction. In fact, it is more fun watching him than anyone else in the film.

Avoid getting burnt in this Tevaring inferno.

Published in The Navhind Times on 11th January 2015

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