Deva Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
Y’all, I just got back from the Sundance Film Festival, got to see SO many amazing films!
Aur aate hi bohot ummeed ke saath ticket khareed ke dekhne gayi main good old Bollywood, film lagi thi Deva.
Guess karo, JUST guess karo kya hoga iss review mein aage! Lets get into it.
Adapted from original screenplay by Bobby-Sanjay, Deva is the story of police officer Dev, who is angry, volatile, explosive, and very swaggy. If Kabir Singh had chosen to go to the police academy instead of medical school. He sleeps with many women, his colleagues fear him, obviously there are deep set daddy issues propelling the entire narrative.
Deva wants to say things — about police brutality, corruption, class divides, but is weirdly timid to go the whole hog. Questionable green screen CGI sets the scene. Dev is on the phone, riding a motorcycle, about to reveal who he thinks is the killer behind a murder case he’s working on. Instead he is run off the road, and we go into flashback. Building up to the accident moment, you are now playing detectives along with Dev A, the pre-crash, pre-memory loss Dev. Everyone around him could be murderer, who does he trust?
On paper, this sounds great. A whodunit, that’s already solved, the murderer likely a few steps ahead of the investigation. However, this adaptation, with 6 credited writers, spends too much time on convoluted build up, too little on character development. There is Pravesh ‘Emotional Atyachar’ Rana, who is a DCP, who might be corrupt or might just have a bad mustache — unclear. Is the lady cop, whose name you hear ONCE , Dipti played by Kubbra Sait dirty? Or is it the best friend’s air-hostess fiancé? Before you begin to sleuth, a dance number is cued, and Pooja Hegde materialises out of thin air. She is a reporter, but beyond tired tropes, you’ve seen deployed while writing every single female journalist in every single bit of cinema, there is little more to her. She dances real good. Oh and she might be the murderer too.
For a film that aims to be the cinematic version of the Cluedo Board Game, Deva has little to no patience or frankly interest in creating captivating, interesting characters. Very few around Dev have any inner live, dimensions to their beings are explored, resulting in no breadcrumbs for the audience to pick up in a film that wants to be a thriller.
You spend most of your time with Dev, 90% of whose personality is “main character energy”, and as such Shahid Kapoor is the perfect actor for the role. At his own sister’s wedding, the song Dev makes everyone sing and dance to is “Deva Alaa Rey”. I swear, if my brother tried to pull that stunt at my wedding, he would have been banned from the premises. Anyway, Shahid Kapoor is MAGNETIC. There is absolutely no denying, once the actor is on your screen, everything else could be covered in glittering gold, your eyes would still remain stuck on the man. You might wonder, are cops allowed to wear pants that tight, that’s nug, but the quintessential angry Shahid Kapoor on a motorcycle stead-cam shot is so beautifully perfected at this point, who cares about cop decorum? When post-memory loss Dev B rolls around, you are reminded how good of an actor Shahid Kapoor is. Same body, same clothes, same surrounding, and yet the man in front of you is a different kind of cop, unsure, unaware, sort of aghast with the life Dev A lead. Two scenes stand out, Dev B’s interactions with a sharp shooter played by Upendra Limaye, who talks about weapons with heavy of sexual arousal. Second Dev A confronting his rich bestie, another cop, played by Pavail Gulati. Again, same guy, two different personalities. A better film would have been able to explore a deeper sentiment here, but Deva only serves as a showcase for Shahid Kapoor’s talent, really.
However, the swag has GOT to let-up at some point. Sharp shooter ko point out karte huye swag, maar khaate huye swag, jail ke andar swag, bister se nikalte hi swag. For a very long duration, Dev too doesnt turn into a fully realised person. He is a broody concept.
The foley artists get their moments to shine in this film, every watermelon in the neighborhood probably sacrificed for those un-ending breaking bones sounds. Its impossible to keep track of who is mad at whom at what time, and who Dev is chasing after and why, but if fractures and ruptures are your jam, yeh film dekh kar February tak ka quota poora ho jaayega.
If there are any attempts at social commentary in this film, they are too flimsy to be of note, or consequence. Heavy underlay music enhances the filminess of the whole shebang as the film keeps trying to take flight, never quite managing to leave the runway. If you actually want a solid thriller with some logic — Squid Game season 2 dekh lo.
