Vedaa movie review: Daftly rigged Vedaa

Does centering all of it on caste do disservice to the important issue itself? If everything appears so unbelievably/impossibly unreal/exaggerated, so must be the problem being highlighted, hence? That’s my fear

Film: Vedaa 
Director: Nikkhil Advani 
Actors: John Abraham, Sharvari 
Rating: 1.5/5

While this may be true for many filmmakers, who aren’t in equal parts writer-director, you observe the inconsistencies far more in the works of Nikkhil Advani.

Depending altogether on the script/material handed to him to direct—things can go totally south, or northwards.

Consider his brilliantly written series, Rocket Boys, on scientists Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai. Simply compare it to the shoddy show, Mumbai Diaries (2021), about 26/11.

While both are supposedly based on real-life events, the latter plays up fiction to such astral levels that it never does land.

The same can be said for Advani’s perfectly fine, last theatrical release, Batla House (2019), on the 2008 encounter episode. Compare it to this debilitatingly deranged, wholly unhinged actioner, Vedaa.

It is so widely off the mark of anything to do with Haryana’s Manoj-Babli honour killings; more so, UP’s Meenakshi Kumari, khap-panchayat, Dalit atrocities and women’s rape case; the events that the movie is supposedly inspired from.

It becomes impossible then to anchor the brain on to anything, in particular, let alone make sense of it! Also, there is simply no dramatic relief.

No character graph—everybody starts off from exactly where they end up. The setting, owned by merciless scavengers, belongs to the dead, in any case. Why bother, beyond a point.

There is, of course, the menacing villain (Abhishek Banerjee), Darth Vader of this immensely dark, daft Vedaa—singularly lording over 150 villages in Rajasthan.

Vedaa (Sharvari) herself is the feisty heroine, under attack, in this blindingly rigged set-up, therefore under the care of the muted hero. That’s John Abraham.

Take him as John Wick, what else? What follows for two and half hours’ flat are non-stop action blocks, often in high-speed/slo-mo shots, with 100-tonne John, amassing death counts by the dozen, a minute—blasting every piece of bone, steel and concrete, along the way, with just about a minor wound on his wrist!

Johnny Bravo is a stranger in town, for reasons only known to him. He could’ve been behind closed doors, beating up any kinda baddies for audience’s catharsis.

Why wrap this then in some sorta serious reality, place it specifically in Barmer, that appears more of a riddle thence? There is literally no law in place, never mind lawmakers to turn to, besides courts, press, or police, to look over either. 

Further, does centering all of it on caste do disservice to the important issue itself? If everything appears so unbelievably/impossibly unreal/exaggerated, so must be the problem being highlighted, hence? That’s my fear.

But I know—this is just a movie. Must take it as that. Trying my best, as an audience. And Advani, no doubt, has a strong sense of the visual. The night-light off-roading sequences, with the one-man platoon, John, giving the entire town’s cops and villains a chase, seem stellar.

So does that scene, where the heroine is accosted by the local don. He punches the crap out of her on a lane. The actual violence in the scene swiftly shifts into a distant wide shot. It’s far more effective to feel the sickening pain.

To be fair, you can individually appreciate a lot of the locations, moments, even performances. To be fairer still, there is no script. Much less of a point, therefore, to go from one location, moment, performance, into another, really.

Don’t know about the others, I simply switched off, at some point. Much earlier than I thought I would.

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