Vedaa is not a film about boxing, though its trailer seemed to suggest that.
Director Nikkhil Advani’s film has a bit of boxing, of course, but its plot’s real drivers are caste and caste atrocities. However, Vedaa, starring John Abraham and Sharvari Wagh in the lead, is not a film about caste either.
Vedaa is an action-thriller created to embellish and enhance the legend of John Abraham. In this enterprise, boxing is a tiny diversion and caste plays the same part that Islamic terrorism has often played in previous John Abraham-the-one-man-killer-machine films—It's very bad and it must be annihilated.
But since Vedaa is a Nikkhil Advani film, it's politically sharp, gritty and mildly feminist.
Written by Aseem Arora, Vedaa is set in Rajasthan, but its story really begins in Kashmir. Yep, that same-old scenic battleground Abraham keeps visiting, repeatedly, to save the nation from the Phiran-wearing, machine gun-carrying Islamic terrorists.
This time around Abraham is Major Abhimanyu Kanwar, a brooding man on a mission. And as is often the case with him, here too there once was a lady he loved but lost.
If you have followed John Abraham’s filmography, especially since he went all violent and vigilante, circa 2011 (in Nishikant Kamat’s Force), a dead lady love is a common occurrence.
This personal tragedy is very important and plays a key role in the success of many of Abraham's films, including Vedaa.
For one, this sad story gives his killing sprees a moral impetus.
He is not a random crazy guy stalking every wrong deed and evil dude. His grouse is real and specific, so are his triggers, and thus all his actions are justified.
Two, this trauma helps add a trait common in most characters that John Abraham has played.
You see, John Abraham can’t act, but he can perform. He can project simple emotions very well on the screen, but he needs to do this in short, silent little bursts to make it look like he is acting, without him actually acting.
With a tragic backstory, film scripts give his characters inner turmoil and an emotional ecosystem. And this trauma is used as an excuse and explanation to keep his character silent and brooding.
Once that is settled, our very smart Bollywood directors make him give a one-eyebrow-raised look here, one sideway glance there to insinuate thoughts, emotion and rising hackles.
Then, as bad people keep on doing bad things, Abraham is made to do a straight stare, a glare rather, into the camera to insinuate bubbling rage.
The camera now hovers over his bulging or twitching vein, watches his jaw tighten and his fists clench to insinuate intent.
Then we get a long shot of his body as he sinks into his upper-back hump, as if he’s regressing, being pulled into a backward evolutionary slide of man into ape. And then, with singular purpose he raises his leg, arm, gun and knives and the film breaks into a bloody killing jamboree.
This is what Vedaa does, very effectively. Every 15-20 minutes, Abhimanyu breaks his silence with a five-six word sentence. Emerging from his heavy silence, it feels significant, weighty and elicits claps.
Vedaa’s story is simple.
In Barmer, Rajasthan, Vedaa Berwa (Sharvari Wagh), a young college-going girl, bristles every time she is harassed, humiliated or teased because of her caste.
The spoiled younger brother (played by Kshitij Chauhan) of the local pradhan, Jitendar Pratap Singh (Abhishek Banerjee), is especially creepy and given to driving around in an SUV with his goons. They stop when they see someone alone and vulnerable, and exercise their power through acts of violence.
Major Abhimanyu, stripped of his medals, honours, and uniform after he disobeyed his superiors' orders, joins Vedaa's college as an assistant boxing coach.
He silently watches as she takes water from a matka (earthen pot) instead of the water cooler.
He sees her when she is the first to arrive to enrol for boxing, but then keeps slipping back in the queue to let the upper caste boys get ahead.
She craves equality, freedom and sees a chance of getting a job and getting out of Barmer through sports quota. But she also knows that the all-powerful pradhan, who gives progressive bytes to the local reporter, is the one who oversees all criminal activities in Barmer to ensure that the upper castes are not sullied by the lower castes forgetting their place.
Vedaa’s parents warn her brother repeatedly not to continue his affair with an upper caste girl.
The film's plot gets tighter and scarier when he is caught canoodling with his girlfriend and the pradhan’s self-styled army dedicated to preserving the Savarna system decides to administer punishment.
This and some parts of what follows in the film are based on common Hindu practices and two real-life stories — the Manoj-Babli honour killing of Haryana in 2007 and the shocking 2015 incident of 23-year-old Meenakshi Kumari and her 15-year-old sister who fled their village in Uttar Pradesh after the village council ordered that they be raped and paraded naked as punishment after their brother eloped with a woman of higher caste.
Caste sits in the middle of Vedaa and gives the film heft. There are powerful scenes that are piercing, harsh, and real. This part is very good also because it has excellent actors, especially Abhishek Banerjee, Sharvari Wagh and Kshitij Chauhan.
But this moving, galling middle in Vedaa is bookended by the John Abraham legend.
In the beginning, he takes down a battalion of terrorists in Kashmir, and at the end he takes down upper caste criminals in a high court.
In the first case, he is avenging the murder of his lady love, and in the climax, he is making sure no one comes in the way of Vedaa seeking justice.
Before Abhimanyu takes up cudgels on behalf of Vedaa and wipes out all hurdles in her path, there’s a touch of feminism in the film’s patriarchal world. For a good part, Abhimanyu lets Vedaa fight her battles. He trains her, but doesn’t step in till she asks him to.
This is cool. But it's short-lived.
The second half of the film is a cat-and-mouse game that involves car chases, dramatic encounters, and long-drawn shooting sequences.
Vedaa ends on a triumphant note, with a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi on a wall. But its parting shot is not so much about caste as it is about the very reason for which the film was made.
We go to watch John Abraham films not because we want to appreciate the art and craft of great cinema, but because he holds a particular promise and delivers on it.
In our lives, with our changing realities and priorities, our shifting moods and interests, our motivation that ebbs and flows, our actions often drown between our desires and distractions.
We live lives that are split between those clarifying nights when we see our purpose and paths clearly and make promises to ourselves, only for that image and resolve to dissipate in the light of the day.
We live lives where we have lost sight of ourselves and have a rising pile of broken promises that we keep making to ourselves.
We go to the theatres to watch John Abraham because he keeps his promises.
Because, between life's chanciness and our indecision, because of the doubt and whataboutery, the compromises, corruption and incompetence all around us, John Abraham promises clarity, certainty, efficiency, and a satisfying, cathartic, triumphant end.
Nikkhil Advani's Vedaa delivers on that promise.
Movie: Vedaa
Cast: John Abraham, Sharvari Wagh, Abhishek Banerjee, Kshitij Chauhan, Tamanna Bhatia, Ashish Vidyarthi, Rajendra Chawla, Danish Husain
Direction: Nikkhil Advani
Rating: ***
