Sanket’s Review: Tevar is fairly consistent until the last lap

Cast: Arjun Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha, Manoj Bajpai, Raj babbar
Director: Amit Sharma
Length: 2hrs and 40 minutes approx

For films like TEVAR, the templates are set and therefore the only thing which has to be worked upon is to put all the genres effectively into the film and not compromising on scenes which can be elaborated for few whistles and claps. Fair enough! We understand a film has to cater to masses who enjoys drama which has protagonist spewing few heroic dialogues and antagonist who is at the back-foot. TEVAR too comes from the same school of film-making. In-fact the film is overtly repetitive in its narration where we see the lead pair only running away from the goons, a plot that’s been exploited to death in Bollywood.

But the film benefits enormously from its leading man who submits himself to the rustic, grounded rowdy boy who finds fighting with goons equivalent to playing Kabaddi. The film is pretty brisk in its first hour even if it lasts for 80 minutes. Few scenes stand-out like the ones between Arjun and his sister or Arjun kapoor and Raj Babbar or even the intense and engaging intermission episode. Not that everything is correct here though – the introduction part of Sonakshi is abrupt and the song is too mild to hook you. Also the item number, which is decent enough, feels like it has popped at wrong time.

Post interval, TEVAR doesn’t lose it all at once. It has few gripping parts, like the one with Raj Babbar and Sonakshi Sinha. But intermittently the film stumbles and has to use western looking dance numbers which can be best termed boring! Who expects this film which is unapologetically earthy and “Indian” trying to put lights on for their actor to do some western dance numbers? But what really bogs TEVAR down is last half hour where TEVAR loses direction to where to take its story ahead and that brings in exaggerated and overplayed emotions followed up by stale action sequence. Only if the climax was devised in smarter manner, TEVAR could have been a satisfying watch.

The dialogues at places are funny and some dialogues cheesy. The action scenes initially are good and it is really refreshing to see some new angles and shots and thrills in action scenes. Although as pointed, it seemed like the action director ran short of ideas in climax which looked like rehashed versions of earlier action scenes of the film. The newbie director has to be credited for handling the first half effectively despite the routine screenplay.

Arjun kapoor displays vulnerability and aggression with equal zeal. He does have to work on the emotional scenes which comes across towards the weak finale, but still, he is the film to holds the film together. Manoj Bajpai, although in a role that is type casted for him, gives nice dimension of his character- a character that is brutal but falls for a girl as easily as any other guy in the town, a character that is fooled several times and yet he manages to send through menacing vibes across. Sonakshi sinha, well my review for her remains the same as what was for few of her earlier films. Raj babbar is terrific in few scenes that he appears in.

TEVAR is watchable, but it saddens to see that the film breaks down in the final half hour where ideally it should’ve been its strongest. Go for it, have a good first two hours and then assume as if you’re watching the rest of the film just a duty of finishing the whole film.

Rating – 2.5/5