How much reason and quality writing should you expect from a film in which a man takes time off to make a clever point about the divine hand in our existence even as an avalance is approaching? A film in which most characters wrap themselves up to stay warm in the icy cold of the Himalayas, but the hero warms his blood on his chillum enough to lie shirtless in the snow for a grand introductory shot and the heroine smokes nothing yet does not freeze to death in her short shorts and off-shoulder tops? Gaura is even born mute.Īctually, those seemingly promising early scenes should have served as a warning bell. Devgn gets around that problem by limiting our opportunities to judge his foreign actors – they have little to do, and even less to say. Hindi films have often been guilty of hiring terrible actors to play Caucasian characters. Actually, so are his lover Olga (Erika Kaar), his irritating daughter Gaura Maheshwari (Abigail Eames) and his ally at the Indian Embassy in Bulgaria, Anushka (Sayyeshaa). A raging hero is only as good as his adversary and Shivaay’s antagonists (played by Markus Ertelt, Miroslav Pashov and Swen Raschka) are so thinly sketched that they are damp squibs. The screenplay does not build up any of the other characters sufficiently to match him, and the intensity becomes amusing after a while.
He does not get a hand pump a la Gadar, but he does get a wooden table to uproot and shred to bits. There is a passage in the plot when tragedy strikes and we see his face in relief, the muscles in the space between his left eye and left cheek twitching visibly in a reminder of Deol junior and his dad Dharmendra’s flaring nostrils of yore.ĭevgn here is Deol with less screaming. In Shivaay he is in almost every frame and the strain shows with scenes in which he over-acts in – I cannot believe I am saying this about him! – Sunny Deol style. Post-interval though, the poor writing (credited to Robin Bhatt and Sandeep Shrivastav) and sub-par acting overwhelm everything else as it becomes clear that all Shivaay’s references to Hindu mythology are painfully literal, and beyond a point, it is not an ode to the deity as much as it is a self-indulgent ode to the leading man.ĭevgn, who is also this film’s producer, has in the past managed to pull off vintage Bollywood over-statement in films like Singham without appearing foolish. The pre-interval portion is filled with rich visuals, nail-biting action and the potential for an interesting contemporary take on the Shiva lore. The film is about his relationship with his daughter and how it tears him away from his beloved mountains to a foreign land where men prove to be far more dangerous than any craggy, slippery cliff will ever be.
( Spoiler alert: begins) Our hero Shivaay meets a pretty Bulgarian tourist on a trek through treacherous terrain. And Shiva is, without question, the most fascinating being in the Hindu pantheon of many crore gods. Devgn – who also plays the leading man – is, after all, a dependable actor who does rage, deep affection and pain like few of his colleagues can.
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In those early portions, when the full blast of Himalayan beauty hits us through Aseem Bajaj’s camerawork at some of the world’s most stunning, snow-laden, high-altitude locations, the film holds out great promise. Yet, that is what you get in Shivaay, Devgn’s second directorial venture, which is the story of a modern-day Indian resident of the upper reaches of the Himalayas, mountaineer, guide to foreign tourists and chillum-smoking fount of indomitable strength. Who would have dreamt that such an overtly sexual conversation derived from the mythology of Lord Shiva would emerge from staid, conservative Ajay Devgn and the rarely adventurous Hindi film industry. However, since they indulge in many rounds of coital activity soon afterwards, one assumes he proves to her that he is in possession of his very own ******** and not a mere tattoo of (what many believe to be) the phallic symbol associated famously with the most intriguing member of the Hindu Holy Trinity. He speaks up helpfully: ********? (the word is muted in the film) He: (wordlessly reveals a tattoo of the three-pronged weapon on his back) He: (wordlessly reveals a tattoo of a serpent on his muscular forearm) She: (her next question a gesture indicating a cobra’s hooded head) He: (wordlessly reveals a tattoo of the handsome deity on his bulging masculine breast) What do you have that Lord Shiva has? Where is the long hair? She: So your name is Shivaay, that’s Shiva with a “y”.
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