A significant portion of the new Antony Varghese starrer film Daveed is your template story of an underdog. The story here unravels mostly in the second half, and the first half that sets up the drama is a dragged story with chapters that aren’t amusing. Thanks to the visualization of the action blocks in the final leg of the film, which builds a solid drama within the fight sequence and presents the outcome realistically, the generic feel of this Govind Vishnu film is somewhat forgiven.
Ashiq Abu, a commoner who has a history of boxing a decade back, is our hero. He now lives a lazy life as a family man who doesn’t have any interest in doing a job. His wife is somewhat fed up with his attitude, but his daughter, who sees him as her hero, boasts about the things her father does when he occasionally goes for bouncer gigs. At one point, the world champion boxer Sainul Akhmadov comes to Kochi, and, long story short, Abu gets into a tussle with him. We see how this incident transpires into a huge rivalry in Daveed.
Surprises are not at all a part of this movie if you have seen enough boxing-oriented films. If you look at the recent Creed franchise films, we can see that the filmmakers are emphasizing more on the psychological journey of characters rather than your typical training montage stuff. The disappointing thing about Daveed is the fact that it relies on this classic template for a major part of the movie, and even when the hero decides to get into the ring, you don’t get to feel the emotion that drives him. After setting up the events that lead to this ultimate fight, in the second half, we get to see the usual training montage stuff. The backdrop of a Desham-like Pooladikkunnu enables the film to have its own moments in the training template, like how Abu has to dodge pebbles thrown at him by kids.
Antony Varghese has done a significant weight shedding for this movie, and that makes him look believable on screen as a boxer. When it comes to performance, the movie isn’t that challenging, and for a large part of the role, it is the usual set of expressions we are seeing from him. Vijayaraghavan, as the boxing coach, has that grace required in an experienced veteran. Lijomol Jose was fine as Abu’s wife. The energy of the kid Jess Sweejan was fun to watch on screen. Mo Ismail, who played the part of Sainul Akhmadov, has that convincing physique and attitude to make the fight believable on screen.
It is obvious that the idea of showing a world-class boxing fight in Malayalam cinema is what made Govind Vishnu do this movie. The issue with the movie’s writing is in building things up to that point. The lazy chapter of the hero, the way he falsely promises acting opportunity to his kid’s teacher, and several other minute tracks in the film clearly expose the lack of ideas in the writing table. Even the backstory that sort of pulls the hero back from the fight doesn’t have the kind of heft one would imagine in a boxing drama. The cinematography has an appealing visual quality in the final fight sequence. If they had chopped a lot of the scenes on a script level, the film would have been a lot more tidier and focused. The pulsating background score definitely helps the film to have that mood.
Daveed is a movie with a lot of evident flaws in the way it treats the subject. For the majority of this movie’s runtime, I could only see the template packaging of emotions. But the quality of the execution of the predictable final fight sequence saves the film from being an absolute dud with no high moments. Daveed is a generic sports drama with occasional sparks.
The quality of the execution of the predictable final fight sequence saves the film from being an absolute dud with no high moments.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
