Choice. A concept you need to elude yourself from while watching Pushkar – Gayatri’s Hindi iteration of their slobberknocker offering from half a decade ago.
To gauge Vikram Vedha objectively, you need to treat it as a standalone.
Set in the heartland of our nation Uttar Pradesh (UP), the film oscillates between the underbellies of Kanpur and Lucknow. A nefarious gangster Vedha (Hrithik Roshan) is on the prowl, sneaking through the fingertips of police like sweat trickles through the neckline.
All until he voluntarily surrenders himself to them and what ensues thereon is the tussle of power and moral perplexity.
Alike the story’s inkling towards they grey matter, cinema in today’s world has evolved beyond the realms of good or bad. To understand an offering meticulously, one has to acknowledge the fact that every film comes with its own share of upsides and shortcomings.
No film is entirely abysmal as long as the trailer tickers don’t prompt you to leave your brains at home. Even the worst of content pieces carry some redeeming qualities.
The recent release Brahmastra Part One: Shiva despite of being a steadily plain fantasy film had its own moments of grandeur and exhilaration to balance the experience. Vikram Vedha, too, has its own cart of goods.
It is a rider film. A mainstream project designed to draw money in a state of economic flux of the film industry. It is a visual feast mounted atop the shoulder of tested crowd-pullers like Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan to expose a new flair of cinema to a wider audience and see if the remake trial and error method could bear fruits and forge new creative gold.
That’s why you remake stuff. To try new mechanisms in front of a different addressable market.
Vikram Vedha mostly succeeds on the showboarding and pageantry, with whistle-worthy moments galore in the film to entice the galleries – the major chunk of moviegoers whose monies make or break a film’s business potential.
The works fine and seamlessly for the people who avail cinema as a recreational service. Folks who grind the week under God’s hot sun, meddle with personal conflicts everyday and want an escape on a weekend from the otherwise mundane and testing life.
Vikram Vedha is a delectable and slurpy proposition for India’s working class audience. The machismo, the high-speed entrances, exits and confrontations, dialogue-baazi et al.
The film comprises of all elements that a 2 Bade Hero Wali Picture is expected to flaunt. In that parlance, Vikram Vedha is a completely satisfying watch and superior to most other actioners released over the years.
Contrary to the recently revered overboard style of action, this action flick has controlled, slick and uber stylistic action sequences. If you roared watching Dhoom 2, Race and Don, quite likely that the single screen conditioning in the child within will be content to the brim.
The portion of the audience Vikram Vedha might struggle to satisfy are the cinema enthusiasts. The ones on social media and OTT, who’ve grown up watching bangers after bangers from the Hindi film industry and has evolved exorbitantly in taste now. The relatively smaller and harder to please portion of the market that is rapidly growing in number courtesy being the youngest population in the world. This portion of the audience is far more hungrier for challenging content and believes in calling a spade a darn effing spade.
For this demographic, Vikram Vedha falters on certain levels.
Right off the bat, it isn’t rooted enough as a story. An idea that originated and was designed for Chennai has been transported to UP by makers who seemingly aren’t very well versed with the culture of the region.
Alike many predecessors, Vikram Vedha treats the dialect rather casually. The Kanpuriya and Lucknavi lehja are spoken in a very caricaturish tone. Every other word has a “wa” added needlessly – bandookwa, junglewa, shatakwa. You get the drill.
This film, too, fails to understand that kathit and likhit dialect sound starkly different. But weirdly enough, this time around, Hrithik Roshan’s dialect doesn’t sound overboard and suits his mad-hatter character. Saif Ali Khan’s Vikram is to be excluded from this list of errors as his hold on the language is bang on. Perhaps his ancestral roots play saviour here.
A major downer for Vikram Vedha is it’s controlled aggression. A story boiling with rage, travesty and personal turmoil, it never completely lets go of the carnage and holds back a lot of venom.
A film of such sort where no character is black or white, where morality and moral high grounds are non-existent, the ordeal should’ve been afforded the license to be tenfold acidic rather than being philosophical and romantically nonchalant.
Which steers us to probably the biggest and gravest pitfall for the film. The performances. The supporting cast has fashionably tanked in this film. Everyone except Satyadeep Mishra has been wasted with the lacklustre material.
Since the story doesn’t organically blend and belong to its universe, the subplots seem rushed, phony in connotation and hence rob the film of the emotional investment and consequent impact desired.
While Vikram Vedha scores maximum as a stylishly shot and packaged film, the lack of depth in screenplay and dialogues choke out its incredible possibilities. A neo-noir film clad with expositions, the performances never reach the imperative impetus of mind bending internalisation. If only the writing could’ve tried to break through and not fit in.
Vikram Vedha is enjoyable because of its leading men. Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan and visibly having a ball out there. We meet Roshan after almost four long years and the hazel eyed wonder-boy from our childhood. A man who seems to be owning his essence way more than before.
Presented like a rugged Tom Ford megamodel, Vedha is a fun ride because the actor playing it is having joy playing a mad-hatter.
Saif Ali Khan, over the past two decades has metamorphosed as one of the most evolved actors in the industry and no complaints from him either.
These two men made the most out of already iconic characters and they don’t even remind you of R. Madhavan or Vijay Sethupathy in either light. That’s a victory for both parties.
The music is surprisingly forgettable. The trio of Vishal – Shekhar – Hrithik have given us Bang Bang, Ghungroo and the duo of Hrithik Roshan – Ganesh Hegde have given us the timeless It’s Magic and Let’s Party. They miss the beat this time. But watching a gangster dance isn’t much of a viewer demand either. So, that can be given a pass.
To understand Vikram Vedha in a nutshell, we have to flip a page from the pro-wrestling playbook. We all have grown up watching WWE. It’s primarily a combat sport, where athletes hitting the superkick are galore. But only Shawn Michaels turned the superkick into the Sweet Chin Music.
For he made it into a moment, blended his move into storytelling. That’s why no matter how good a wrestler is, you remember those who create moments. ‘Cos you remember those, who made you feel something.
Vikram Vedha has a great arsenal of moveset. All it needs is to blend the moveset into storytelling. A tale inspired by many tales of Betal Pachsi, Vikram Vedha is enjoyable and passable enough to grow into a franchise. Go all in balls out, own its skin and dive deep into the madness.
Pushkar – Gayatri are gifted makers and a massive credit to the Indian film industry. They deserve boatload more such opportunities.
Aur kasam bata rahe hain, aisa kar diye toh agli baar gadar mazaa aayega aur tajjaub bhi hoga.
Watch the exclusive interview with Pushkar-Gayathri here:
