Tevar Movie Reviews 2015

CAST: Arjun Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha, Manoj Bajpayee, Raj Babbar
DIRECTION: Amit Ravindernath Sharma
GENRE: Drama
DURATION: 2 hours 39 minutes

• Direction : 3.5/5
• Dialogues : 3/5
• Story : 2.5/5
• Music : 3.5/5
• Visual appeal : 3.5/5

RATING:  

TEVAR HAS THAT MAINSTREAM ATTITUDE

STORY: A corrupt politician gets infatuated with a morally upright student and will go to any lengths to marry her. But she spurns his advances and seeks shelter with a boy her age.

REVIEW: Hell hath no fury like a politician scorned. This stands true for the better part of India where every minister is a government unto himself. So you have Mathura's minister-cum-goonda Gajender Singh (Manoj Bajpayee) wooing collegian Radhika (Sonakshi Sinha). When she rejects his marriage proposal, he vows to get the girl by hook or by crook.

There's bound to be an Alpha male hero to rise against the archetypal villain. In comes Agra boy Pintu Shukla (Arjun Kapoor) - a combination of Rambo, Terminator and Salman Khan (so he says). The son of Shukla (Raj Babbar) the superintendent of police, Pintu's wastrel existence gets meaning when his path crosses that of Radhika. From thereon, it's one explosive ride between the hunter, the prey and the protector.

Amit Sharma's Tevar, a remake of the Telugu hit Okkadu (2003), is over-a-decade-old wine served on a larger canvas. But one mustn't grudge the filmmaker for telling us an old story. After all, in the last decade, not much has changed in the political landscape of India. The Gajenders of the country do run a parallel government. So when murders are committed in broad daylight or the media is lynched by a mob, you have to just stand by and watch.

Instead, you reserve those claps for Babbar and Bajpayee, who deliver class acts even in this milieu. Arjun is bombastic. Sonakshi is adept, but there has been an overdose of her in recent times. Subrat Dutta as the henchman Kakdi shows that a good actor can do wonders even in a lesser role.

The songs Superman and Shruti Haasan's playback attempt Joganiya have recall value. Of course, the film should've been reduced by a good 20 minutes - it doesn't run quite as fast as Arjun does on screen.

Amit makes a smooth progression from 30-second commercials to a 159-minute-long film. His penchant for colours, the right use of the Taj Mahal (as a monument of love), his finesse in presenting the real locations indicate his adroitness in filmmaking.