Vedaa Movie Review: Testosterone & Caste Fatigue

Vedaa Movie Cast/ Actors: John Abraham as former Major Abhimanyu Kanwar, Sharvari Wagh as Vedaa Berwa, Abhishek Banerjee as Jitendar Pratap Singh, Tamannaah Bhatia as Rashi, Ashish Vidyarthi as Kaka, Kumud Mishra as Mausaji, Rajendra Chawla as Mr Berwa

Vedaa Movie Director: Nikkhil Advani

Vedaa Movie Release Date: August 15, 2024

Vedaa Movie Available On: Theatrical Release and (The OTT release is not finalized yet)

Vedaa Movie Movie Released/ Available In Languages: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu

Vedaa Movie Runtime: 150 Minutes

Vedaa Movie Critic Review:

It is like the 80s have returned.

Super deadly Major Abhimanyu Kanwar (John Abraham) has been court-martialled. He doesn’t listen to orders.

After a display of his expressionless action skills in PoK where he asks a terrorist, “Halal pasand ya jhatka?” Abhimanyu is back in Rajasthan.

Out here, lower caste Vedaa (Sharwari Wagh) has been unquestioningly asking an upper caste friend to fill her water bottle in college, following the unrelentingly humiliating rules enforced by Pradhanji Jitendar Pratap Singh (Abhishek Banerjee). Pradhanji is the double-faced neta who spouts the constitution and flouts every clause in it with his own self-made laws. Egged on by a hardliner uncle (Ashish Vidyarthi). Vedaa and family are slapped around by Pradhan and his goons who move around with a skull emblem on the car bonnet, eve tease and degrade girls, boys, and elders with impunity.

Vedaa and Abhimanyu finally team up. BTW, Major Saab has a backstory too, of a dead wife (Tamannaah Bhatia) ‘halal-ed’ by a terrorist. Which has made him more silent and more lethal.

Bone-crunching action pieces alongside a continuum of stomping on the rights of the lower caste, lead to Vedaa heading to court for justice. “You taught me law,” she tells her father, repeating the rights enshrined in the law books. “I’m now familiarising you with reality,” warns her father, arming her with a blade to do to herself what the villains aim to do, when the going gets really rough. With every Pradhan-pleasing cop in the district and every citizen including her own relatives chasing them at every turn, Vedaa moves towards the place of justice, Abhimanyu providing her the muscle support, even if hope is all that awaits her in court.

A mix of caste repression and testosterone action is good material on paper and director Nikkhil Advani’s intent is noble. But between him and writer Aseem Arora they binge on the repression of the underprivileged when cast atrocities are not a new, untouched cinematic issue. Anubhav Sinha’s fine Article 15 remains unsurpassed; Suriya’s Jai Bheem was a blockbuster; even the OTT show Dahaad had dealt with it well.

The intent also gets derailed by the distractions of commercial compulsions like a meaningless item number (by Mouni Roy of all people).

Also, when John Abraham is the hero, Abhishek Banerjee and Ashish Vidyarthi are hardly formidable enough to stand up to him and hold on till eternity. With neither hero nor henchmen or netas dropping dead even after being shot, knifed, pummelled, the overdose of action goes beyond the realm of the credible, slipping into disbelief. The battle climaxes at the court where the judges shut themselves and cower under benches while Pradhan, Kaka, and cronies create mayhem. It takes over an hour for any of them to finally fall dead punctuated with dialogues that quote the Mahabharat. With a hero named Abhimanyu, how can the chakravyuh not figure?

Viewers going in for a John the brawn action thriller will wonder what a relative newcomer like Sharvari is doing in the title role. Especially, when her battle is prolonged to fatigue levels.

Perhaps the makers hope that the action alone will bring in the ‘B’ centre and single screen audience.

Vedaa Movie – Watch Or Not?: Save it for an OTT watch.

Vedaa Movie Review Score Rating: 2 out of 5 (i.e. 2/5)

Vedaa Movie Official Trailer: