Rosshan Andrrews’s ‘Deva’, starring Shahid Kapoor, is a solid remake of ‘Mumbai Police’

The biggest issue is the film’s structure, which makes us guess who the bad guy is. But everything around this is very nicely done. The rest of this review contains serious spoilers.

There’s no one named Deva in Rosshan Andrrews’s Deva, but we do get someone whose name becomes a version of the title. That someone is Dev, aka Dev-A, a swaggering cop who turns into a different version of himself, Dev-B, after an accident. The difference is due to memory loss. Dev-A is the alpha-est of alpha males, with hip-thrusting dance moves and a mouth that emits endless fumes of cigarette smoke. He doesn’t follow rules. He doesn’t wear a khaki uniform. Dev-B, on the other hand, is unsure all the time. We see him in a uniform. He needs to find his way back to being Dev-A, and this journey of self-discovery is the soul of this remake of Mumbai Police. The remake follows the path of the original for the most part, with a change in the climax that is way more organic and realistic than the one we got in the Malayalam movie. But it comes at a cost.

In Mumbai Police, the ending was more sensational, in the sense that it was crafted around a plot point that no one could have seen coming. It was created to create… a sensation. But after that initial “wtf just happened” slap to the forehead, it didn’t hold up well. How can someone forget his sexuality after losing his memory? In Deva, the forgetfulness is more believable, because someone can indeed forget that he was a cop with a dark secret. But the flip side is that – despite the change of ending – we know that the hero is the villain. Only the “how” and “why” of the villainy are a mystery. So there is no slap-to-the-forehead for those who have seen Mumbai Police. But if you can live with this, the film compensates for the lack of sensationalism in many ways, chief among which is Shahid’s dual-shaded performance.

As Dev-A, Shahid Kapoor is excellent. The way the man is written, he will barge into a politician’s party on his bike to get what he wants. He will make love to a married woman. There are no air quotes around these behaviours. It comes from within. There is simply no room in Dev-A’s life for decorum. And this becomes the backbone for Shahid’s even better performance as Dev-B, where his confused post-amnesiac mind cannot handle his innate animalistic instincts. Watching the transformation from Dev-A to Dev-B, we ask: “Who is this [new] man!” Dev-B seems to be asking this question of himself. And that’s why the earlier masala touches make sense. The reference to Don’s title song is not just a random “Bachchan reference” to infuse coolth into the protagonist. One, Don is about two men who look alike but are entirely different people, much like Dev-A and Dev-B. Two, the song’s refrain (“main hoon kaun”) could well be every amnesiac’s anthem!

Deva has little time for the people around the protagonist – still, they register solidly. Pavail Gulati plays the Christian friend, Pravesh Rana plays the Muslim friend. They get a few good moments. The women, too, are given something to do. Kubbra Sait is a fellow-cop, someone who senses that something is off with Dev-B. Pooja Hegde is the love interest, a journalist first seen making a page with a story about Dev-A, titled “Police ya Mafia!” This ties in beautifully with her final scene. This is no hapless heroine. She is a cop’s daughter. When her father suffers burn injuries, we expect her to run into the hospital room screaming. But she’s seen sitting outside, calmly, in the corridor. We feel she’s been dreading that something like this would happen, and now it has. This is the job her father signed up for, after all, and she’s proud of him. I wish she’d been given more to do, though there is a terrific reveal about their relationship after Dev-A turns into Dev-B.

This is a well-paced movie. The scenes breathe, and so do the visuals, thanks to Sreekar Prasad’s editing and Amit Roy’s excellent showcasing of Mumbai beyond the usual locations and landmarks. A sequence set in a chawl, after Dev-A apprehends a thug, is extraordinarily done. What could have been ordinary hero-giri moments – using a carrom board to torture someone, or using a bike’s headlamp to illuminate a night with approaching attackers – become acts that are organic extensions of the macho leading man. Even the reason behind Dev-A’s doings is not overdone. We are spared a massive sob story, and given the barest of hints – like the lack of money that makes Dev’s rich friend’s father look down on him. The only miscalculation is the last stretch, where an action scene is forced in just to prove that Dev-A has indeed become a good guy. Otherwise, Deva is a good, entertaining remake, structural flaws and all. And after Animal and now Deva, can we insist on an Upendra Limaye cameo in every Hindi movie!

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