Shivam Bhaje Cast: Ashwin Babu, Digangana Suryavanshi, Arbaaz Khan, Tanikella Bharani, Murali Sharma, Shakalaka Shankar, Hyper Aadi, Tulasi
Crew:
Cinematography by Dasaradhi Sivendra
Music by Vikas Badisa
Editing by Chota K. Prasad
Produced by Maheshwar Reddy Mooli
Written & Directed by Apsar
Shivam Bhaje Movie Rating: 2.25/5
Ashwin Babu has been sticking to horror, comedy horror and Novelistic Horror genres for most part of his career. Shivam Bhaje is a horror mixed commercial masala cinema from him.
Plot:
Chandrasekhar(Ashwin Babu) works as a loan recovery agent and hates Lord Shiva. He used to be a true believer but due to his father’s accidental death, he took this opposite turn. He fears and hates dogs but falls in love with a pet owner Shailaja Krishnamurthy(Digangana Suryavanshi). On the other hand, a pharmaceutical company looks to produce vaccines for mass vaccination campaign. But their doctor gets killed after he finds out HCN being mixed in them.
Parallely, China and Pakistan militant organisation combine hands to attack India. They use mass vaccination as the means to attack and unstable Indian army. For this very purpose, that company starts producing vaccines and the doctor identified this. Suddenly, fighting few goons during a loan recovery process, Sekhar looses his eyes.
Instead of human eyes, dog eyes are Xenotransplantated to him during surgery. ACP Murali(Arbaaz Khan) starts investigating murder and another one also occurs. What is the connection between these two plots? Watch Shivam Bhaje to know more.
Analysis:
As an actor, Ashwin Babu is good in this role but writing did not give him much to do. Digangana Suryavanshi is also under utilised and Arbaaz Khan almost sleepwalked through the film. Rest of the others did their best as per the material offered to them. More often than not none of the actors part of the cast are expected to perform poorly and that’s the case here, too.
Shivam Bhaje needed a much more convincing writing that is weird, absurd and unconventional. At the idea level itself, the plot needed to be treated in a comical way with serious subplots. But the writer-director tried the opposite. In a comedy, you can accept such a premise of Xenotransplantation but not in a serious film.
While humanising animals is not an alien subject to Indian Cinema, this kind of dog having effect on human, needed more mature handling. The absurdity of the idea needed to shine than just the novelty of the premise. Having some functional scenes that many commercial films have explored and then a generic romantic track, doesn’t add up to any effect.
Here, a human is not just sympathizing with an animal but he is going through same emotions. Only brain can transfer emotions not organs. So, a simple fun premise has been handled too seriously making us wonder even if this is all possible, how would a certain thing happen rather than riding along the story of Shivam Bhaje. On the whole, movie remains an amateurish attempt at best.
Positives:
Production Values
Ashwin Babu performance
Lead up sequence to reveal
Absurdly weird premise
Negatives:
Amateurish Writing
Convenient twists
Unimaginative Narrative
Predictable Screenplay
Novel point in regular template
Shivam Bhaje Movie Bottom-line: Bitten by Dog
