Yudhra Movie Review: An underwhelming thriller with good action blocks
The writing is a huge letdown, given the team involved. And the performances fail to ignite fire into the material.
If there’s one prolific thing that can be associated with Excel Entertainment, it is bringing the Hollywood sensibility to Bollywood. Dil Chahta Hai, Don, Rock On!!—these are as much Indian as they are imported; made of, for, and by people who have access to international culture but are still very much in touch with their ‘roots’. Bring in Shridhar Raghavan, the writer of some great action films like Khakee and War, and we should have gotten a well-rounded action entertainer that ably combines great action set pieces with emotionally resonant moments.
Yudhra, however, is a mess in terms of writing. A long character set-up for Yudhra (Siddhant Chaturvedi), a man who can’t help but get mad, should have led to moments where we feel terrified of his ability to easily lose his cool. Moments where, because of his temper, Yudhra makes a hasty decision. Looking at him, his part-father figure Rehman Siddiqui (Ram Kapoor) says, “Inko khatron se khelna pasand hai.” However, after some time into the first half, this trait is barely existent—the man in fact seems pretty calculative and well-planned.
In a larger-than-life actioner, logic doesn’t really matter all that much if the characters and their actions are convincing; it wouldn’t matter if the hero has the secret ability to flap his wings and fly. However, some of the writing decisions in Yudhra (and by Yudhra) just don’t make sense. Why travel to Portugal to save a girl from the bad guys, only to just let her travel alone? Of all the ways to assassinate a dreaded don who has been escaping people for years, why come up with the done-to-death plan of killing him when he is partying on a cruise? Why not write scenes that show how much the characters mean to each other rather than just having random lines like “Today is dad’s birthday, I really miss him?” The latter point might not apply to a slick, no-nonsense actioner, but Yudhra wants to be so much more.
There are parts that work well. Despite quick cutaways, the action set pieces have vigour and some good imagination. A sewing machine used to stitch the hands of a goon together so that he always looks like he is pleading. A flute getting pierced into a throat and making sounds when the person chokes. These are well thought-through, and they have a sense of slickness that is missing in the rest of the film. The dialogues, by Farhan Akhtar, make the scenes play out more interesting than they actually are. When Rehman tells Yudhra that his dad had an anger issue too, he remarks, “Will the judge give me a shorter term if we tell I have a genetic problem?” The background score, by Sanchit Balhara and Ankit Balhara, is perfectly sinister. And the cinematography by Jay Pinak Oza is sensational. There is a deep, saturated tone throughout that lends more intensity to the scenes than the characters themselves do.
The other big issue, apart from the writing, are the performances. Siddhant Chaturvedi is well-cast in the sense that he looks the part, but he needed to have inflicted Yudhra with much more insanity. Without imbibing a maniac-like treatment to Yudhra, the character honestly comes across as a prick, being purposefully rude to people (until miraculously changing into a good guy later, because, well, he is the hero). Raghav Juyal needed to have been given way more than ‘wears colourful clothes.’ The rest of the actors are all equally flat, with no chemistry between one another.
In the end, Yudhra feels like a missed opportunity. It struggles to find a footing, lingering in the 'somewhat entertaining’ zone. Two terribly placed songs, an unnecessarily stretched romantic angle, needless jumps from one location to another - it all ends up half baked. I left the theatre wishing they had much more of the action portions. Or should I say, Kill Chahta Hai?