Early in Ravi Udyawar’s Yudhra, the eponymous protagonist is called a miracle, a fighter. Yudhra (Siddhant Chaturvedi) is orphaned at birth. His parents were killed in an accident. We are told he survived despite having blood supply cut off for five minutes. The doctor suggests this trauma of survival may have long-term effects on Yudhra’s brain. His police officer father’s colleague, Kartik (Gajraj Rao), raises him. There’s another friend, Rehman (Ram Kapoor), who always shows up as support for Yudhra. However, he has major anger issues. Emotionally, he seems stunted. That primary fighter label becomes his definitive trait.
Yudhra willingly courts risk. Danger gives him a kick. He’s daring, reckless and not remotely bothered about consequence or others’ opinion. Rehman advocates sending Yudhra for military training; that may be a good utilisation of his rage. However, Yudhra doesn’t last many days at the cadet institute either. The convoluted script finds him turning into an undercover agent for the police, tasked to nab drug lord Firoz (Raj Arjun) and put an end to his business. The mission also has overtones of retribution. However, Shridhar Raghavan’s screenplay barely brings any menace or striking personality to drug mafia linchpins. Firoz is said to have the biggest drug empire in India. Such a formidable individual comes off as too gullible and naïve when there’s a rather obvious mole in his network.
Instead the film caves to the old, weary temptation of making the action hero indestructible. Yudhra is a hulky, granite force. Firoz has an entire contingent behind him, who easily perish at few blows of Yudhra. This reduces stakes and creates an apathetic equation between us and the protagonist. We know he can pull himself out of any dangerous situation. Where’s the dread?
At a backbreaking two and half hours, Yudhra is unforgivably long. Red dissolves forcefully break up few sections. Set-pieces proliferate without the buttress of a neat, satisfying narrative. The film scrambles at establishing international negotiations. A Chinese cocaine cartel props up as a major player. But they affect the narrative mechanics little beyond a mission. The film hops from the Deccan jail to Shanghai to Sri Lanka to Portugal. All this setting-capering is too disjointed to convince us of the scale of operations.
The plotting veers to a choppy melange of abrupt revelations. Udyawar elides basics of weaving, accruing suspense. There’s no buildup, just a roughshod collation of handsomely mounted combats and clashes. Some of these are pretty slick. In a staggering night-time scene on a ship lit by flares, Jay Oza’s camera leaps, quicker than you can orient your attention, through silkily choreographed skirmishes. Oza labours to give a sleek texture to routine scenes.
Yudhra develops long-winded motivations, none of which appear feasible when you take a step back and see the big picture. Back-stabbings and manipulations of friends and family are buried under orchestrations too elaborate to be plausible. Characters’ hidden identities bob to the surface by way of shock, but the film doesn’t care to build any relationship other than that between Yudhra and his childhood sweetheart Nikhat (Malavika Mohanan). Though Mohanan gets her share of action as well, this romantic track, replete with few annoying, unnecessary songs, distracts instead of injecting much-needed emotional intensity into the film.
It is Raghav Juyal as Shafiq, Firoz’s coke head son, who ignites a scene the minute he storms in. The trigger-happy Shafiq has strong remnants of Juyal’s previous role, the gleefully unpredictable Fani in the recent, infinitely more thrilling actioner Kill. Nevertheless, this is a performer so spry and light-footed he springs surprise, a volatility to even commonplace montages. Though the writing sidelines him, Juyal erupts a crackerjack chaos, positively halting the film in its tracks. Watch out for him in a key fight scene as he holds off the bullet rain for a second, mulls and resumes firing. It’s a fleeting moment which assumes a terrific, shifting energy in Juyal’s hands. Rocking an array of fur coats and shades, his charisma tides over cliches. While he seems to have the most fun in the film, Chaturvedi struggles to enliven a one-note hunk. Worry almost never crosses his face.
How can you root for a hero this unidimensional and stubbornly emotion-free? Yudhra’s anger issue also bursts out only in the most opportune, provocative moments. Priming such a bland character as the protagonist works against the film, despite flashes of immersive action. Chaturvedi cannot lug the film ahead. Yudhra lurches to a limp close after flinging a slew of predictable twists. Udyawar even tries a wistful final note, a parent-child tragedy, but the manufactured poignance comes too late, too little. It’s all a deathly bore.
