Chhaava Review: Noteworthy Performance From Vicky Kaushal, But The Film Doesn't Roar

Leaping from the pages of 17th century Maratha history to the fantastical realms of Bollywood mythologizing, Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, son of the revered Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, receives no-holds-barred epic treatment in Laxman Utekar's Chhaava. The burden that the film puts upon itself in the bargain takes a heavy toll on the eventual shape of things.   

Despite a pair of noteworthy performances from lead actor Vicky Kaushal and Akshaye Khanna as the antagonist, the film falls apart at the seams because it has little to hold it together apart from its unabashed obsession with excess.  

We accept that it is all right for the makers to take the title literally—it means lion cub. It, however, makes no sense to use that as an excuse to roll out an endless parade of growls and scowls in the service of battle scenes that go on and on.        

The screenplay, credited to five writers, including the director, gives the lead actor carte blanche to roar and soar. He grabs the opportunity with both hands and spares no effort to repay the trust reposed in him. Kaushal isn't in army fatigues here, but when the titular hero shouts "Jai Bhavani" to enthuse the Maratha warriors, you almost hear echoes of "How's the josh?"      

The impressive performance, no matter how much power it packs, cannot paper over the film's glaring flaws, the most notable being its abject inability to separate convincing historicity from unalloyed 'heroic' grandstanding.  

The lure of high drama robs Chhaava of any possibility of grounding itself in believable terrain. History does not feel like history here and the line between the exploits of an intrepid warrior-king fighting for his ideals and an acrobatic stuntman and swordfighter playing to the gallery is blurred.        

Chhaava is adapted from a novel of the same name by Shivaji Sawant but it isn't tempered with the balance and nuance of a literary work that put together an account of an era that had a far-reaching impact and a ruler who rose like a meteor and strengthened a dynasty.  

Everything in the film, from Sambhaji's call for swarajya to Aurangzeb's inhuman depredations, is laid out thick and heavy, without the slightest concession to subtlety. Chhaava groans under the weight of its own overreach. It is over-loud, gratuitously gory and unbearably demonstrative.             

The production design, the camerawork (DOP - Saurabh Goswami) and the action sequences cannot be faulted, but they do not serve the purpose that they would have in a less bloated period drama. The declamatory nature of the storytelling in Chhaava robs it of human elements of the sort that might have considerably enhanced its emotional impact. 

The title is spelt out unambiguously early in the film, when Sambhaji fights a ferocious lion, vanquishes it and emerges from the encounter without a scratch. The lion (referring to Shivaji) may be dead, go tell Aurangzeb that the cub is still around, he yells. 

Aurangzeb (played by Akshaye Khanna, whose performance is about the only element in the film that skirts around its many pitfalls) is, unsurprisingly, an ageing brute of a man who admits to having wrested the Mughal crown by trampling upon the bodies of his own family.  

The emperor's sight is set on the Deccan ruled by the Marathas. He has a massive army at his beck and call, but the valour of Sambhaji and his men stand in their way.  

Chhaava is a tiresome film because it has no layers. Playing out over two hours and ten minutes, it is a single-note tale that does not evolve beyond the greed vs glory, brutality vs righteousness register. 

Before the title flashes on the screen, Sambhaji's army catches the Mughals unawares in Burhanpur, the centre of their growing power. The enemy has been lulled into complacency following the death of Shivaji. When the Marathas march on the city, the enemy soldiers hurriedly secure the entrance.  

But no big deal. Sanbhaji, on horseback, jumps over a wide barrier and lands in the midst of the Mughal soldiers. Like members of the audience rooting for the great warrior, they, too, stand and admire his courage. And as is the norm in such films, even when they attack him, they do so one by one.  

And Sambhaji rips off limbs, slashes necks, and impales torsos without being challenged. What's more, somewhere along the way, the action pauses just long enough to allow him to save a child caught in the melee and hand him over to his aai (mother). 

This is larger-than-life territory and everything that pans out on the screen is extreme. The battles are always one-sided. The 'dreaded' Mughal soldiers are usually lambs to the slaughter. Aurangzeb, aging and despondent, which makes him even more ruthless, is a sitting duck notwithstanding all the threats that he hisses out. 

The women in Chhaava never come into their own despite being granted a few dramatically significant sequences. Led by Yesubai (Rashmika Mandanna), Sambhaji's wife, they include Aurangzeb's daughter Zeenat (Diana Penty), who pipes up once in a while to indicate that she matters, and Rajmata Soyrabai, Sambhaji's stepmother who nurtures the ambition of seeing her biological son become the Chhatrapati. 

Among the men around Sambhaji are his general and adviser Hambirao Mohite (Ashutosh Rana), his friend and court poet Kavi Kalash (Vineet Kumar Singh) and Aurangzeb's renegade son Mirza Akbar (Neil Bhoopalam), who seeks the help of the Maratha ruler to settle scores with his father. If they do rise above the din, it is only in flashes.  

In strictly visual (and hence surface) terms, Chhaava, despite being awash in a single colour, has far greater depth than the top-heavy treatment that it deploys in order to pay tribute to Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj.  

The granules of history elude the film, and so do the finer points of the cinematic art of assembling barely remembered anecdotes for mass consumption. If it isn't a complete washout, it is solely because of the two main actors.