Inside a Star’s Gilded Cage

Deva | Director: Rosshan Andrrews | Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Pooja Hegde

IN THEIR DESIRE to remake the best of regional cinema, the Mumbai film industry is expert at squeezing every nuance out of the original. So it is with Deva, which has been stripped off almost everything that made the original Mumbai Police (2013) surprising.

Shahid Kapoor is an excellent actor and has done some outstanding work in the past but like most Mumbai actors he is a prisoner of the hero image. He is incapable of stretching his stardom to play anything that is less than hyper masculine. While Deva retains the compelling idea of an amnesiac police officer investigating a crime twice, while breaking bones and crushing bodies in the process, the film steers clear of anything that could suggest the homosexuality angle in the original. Even those who may not have seen the Malayalam original will tire of the endless stream of blood, screaming and fast-forward motion that characterises Deva, A word of advice for Shahid Kapoor — not every remake is Kabir Singh.

Aanand L RaiDevaDhanushJaideep AhlawatPaatal LokPooja HegdeShahid Kapoor