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John Abraham Vedaa Review: The challenge facing a film which wants to front a female lead while taking care that the big male action hero is never down-faced is clear in the way ‘Vedaa’ is constructed: the title belongs to her, the story which moves everything into high gear is hers, but when push comes to multiple shoves, the plot-line gives into the demands of macho-hero-doing-hero-things, truly one of Bollywood’s besetting banes.
Yes, it is brave for a mainstream Bollywood film to zero in on the tale of a young Dalit woman in a Rajasthan village finding the courage to stand up against caste oppression and violence. Caste is not just an elephant in elegant rooms across the country, but also for the movies where lower caste characters are meant to stay in their designated lane — battered, trampled, victimised — and not heard, becoming a hook for the next male saviour hero to come riding in. And this is valid especially for a woman.
In that respect, Vedaa Berwa (Sharvari) seems to have broken the mould in the way she wants to learn boxing, even when there seems to be little or no encouragement from either her father (an excellent Rajendra Chawla), or the village school’s sports teacher (Danish Husain), or an ex-Armyman with a troubled history of insubordination who goes by the name of Abhimanyu. In that case, can a ‘chakravyuh’ be far behind?
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The snaring is deftly done by local landowner and self-styled decider of fates Jitendra Pratap Singh (Abhishek Bannerjee), doing a good job of hiding innate bigotry and hatred for those who should know their place, before letting his snarling self come to the fore. Helping him along are younger brother (Kshitij Chauhan) and father (Ashish Vidyarthi), as vicious and venal as any Bollywood baddie you’d care to see. Or not.
We do get the customary humiliations — to be made to stand with shoes on the head, for one — heaped upon Vedaa and her family. It is one of the highlights of the film, which does take the trouble to show how deep the segregation has been ingrained in the way she keeps taking it all in, till one day she can’t.
And that’s where the film, despite its attempts to stay au courant, goes right back to the way of hidebound Bollywood movies: we know which character will come to a terrible end just by the way the script introduces them; we also know which character will turn traitor as soon as they hove into view. And of course we know who will fight to their last breath to save the day.
So it’s really no surprise that even when Vedaa and Abhimanyu are on the run, the latter leads from the front, while the film’s hard-working editor keeps finding ways to bring Vedaa back into focus. In all this, Sharvari makes the most of her titular part, who knows that ‘the Constitution’ will be her saviour. Bannerjee does bad well, but we already know that, witnessing his trajectory Pataal-Lok onwards. And Abraham is as Abraham always is: slicing, dicing and keeping the villains at bay with impassive ferocity, in some of the most kinetic action sequences I’ve seen recently.
Finally, the film does circle back to Vedaa and allows her a brief cathartic speech, but the question really is: is that enough?
Vedaa movie cast: John Abraham, Sharvari, Abhishek Bannerjee, Ashish Vidyarthi, Kshitij Chauhan, Rajendra Chawla, Danish Husain, Paritosh Sand, Tanya Malhara
Vedaa movie director: Nikkhil Advani
Vedaa movie rating: 2 stars
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