Movie Review: Tevar

In Amit Sharma’s “Tevar” (“Attitude”), a remake of the Telugu-language film Okkadu (“One and Only”), the protagonist is a self-confessed Salman Khan fan, and imitates all his moves, except for removing his shirt. He is also, as he tells one of his friends, what would emerge if you whizzed Rambo, the Terminator and Salman Khan in a blender. Sharma, it appears, has mixed the movies of choreographer and dancer Prabhudheva, added a bit of Anand Rai to the mix and lots of South Indian inspiration and produced a two-and-a-half hour film that unfortunately, imbibes the flavor of none of the above.

Tevar, as is evident from the promos, is a hodgepodge of everything, and yet another in a long line of Bollywood assembly line productions where South Indian films get homogenized; they are polished with a bit of song and dance, and then pushed out into the world as blockbuster films that try to break box-office records.

You know where the movie is going. Boy meets girl and finds out that girl is being chased by a diabolical gangster who decides who plans to marry her regardless of what she wants. Our hero steps in, saves her from a life of captivity and falls in love. The central conflict and its resolution are visible immediately.

Sharma makes the process as tiresome and painful as pulling off pulling off a bandage millimeter by millimeter. Sharma takes detours through song-and-dance sequences and violent fight sequences before reaching the predictable conclusion.

Pintu (Arjun Kapoor) plays a college student who saves Radhika (Sonakshi Sinha) from the clutches of Gajendra (Manoj Bajpayee), the local strongman by chance. When Gajendra chases the duo, he hides Radhika in his house, and vows to protect her from her unsuitable suitor.

Apart from its one-line plot, Tevar doesn’t offer much in terms of story. Sharma’s treatment of a much-flogged genre and subject are no different than many others before him. Instead of choosing to be economical about his narrative, Sharma adds too many distractions, and thus dilutes the limited effectiveness of this genre. If only he had managed to tell his story quickly and effectively, Tevar wouldn’t have been as excruciating and tiresome.

Of the actors, Arjun Kapoor puts in a sincere effort, but doesn’t have the panache required to pull off this kind of role, where mere screen presence makes up for acting abilities. Sonakshi Sinha as Radhika plays her oft-repeated role as the damsel in distress, the seemingly educated, confident young girl who transforms into a whimpering, sobbing, spineless woman who can do nothing more than just for A MAN to rescue her.

It is she and her portrayal as a woman who can do nothing but stand and watch helplessly as men fight over her that are Tevar’s biggest disappointments.