Maadeva movie review: Vinod Prabhakar attempts to shake off action hero image, but film doesn't offer him much else

Maadeva movie story: Maadeva (Vinod Prabhakar), the emotionally numb hangman at a local prison, has a slow but steady change of heart when he meets Parvathi (Sonal Monteiro), whose mother is serving time. All that she wants is to get Maadeva to smuggle in home-cooked food for her mother, but somewhere along the way, she realizes that his gruff appearance and behaviour are a result of years of trauma, which a little tender loving care could heal. Can Maadeva and Parvathi have their happily-ever-after though?

Maadeva movie review: Vinod Prabhakar films have a certain template, with 4-5 fights, a couple of songs, and not much by way of a story or potential for him to act. And Maadeva, he’d said, was a far cry from that. Well… that’s not entirely true, it’s still in that template, but with a semblance of a story and a few sequences squeezed in to satisfy the actor in Vinod. When Maadeva had released in theatres, some of the comments one came across were that it features Vinod’s career best performance.

That sounded promising, so, although I’d missed the film during the theatrical release, the plan was to check out the film once it dropped on OTT. Maadeva is currently out on a platform, albeit on rental only, and the buzz is that the makers are taking it to multiple streamers for maximum impact in the coming days. The question, of course, is whether or not it is worth the while. Well, it certainly depends on individual cinema preferences.

Maadeva was not really my cup of tea, both in terms of story-telling and presentation. In his pre-release interviews, Vinod had waxed eloquently about his earlier films not offering him much to do beside flexing his muscles and fighting - a low bar had been set. Maadeva was an upgrade for him from the routine films he’d been doing. The problem is that a marginally better product does not make it a groundbreaking effort.

The focus of Maadeva is still on his angry avatar, the one ready to send the villains flying. The only difference is that Maadeva doesn’t do much talking – he observes and reacts to circumstances around him. For what it’s worth, Vinod does give the little he’s given to sink his teeth in his all. But the problem is that despite his best efforts, the film, which is set in the 80s, feels dated and jaded. The film is also limited by its locations– set pieces of a few houses, a jail and a railway station – which make the film even more dull.

Maadeva verdict: This is a film that’s strictly for Vinod Prabhakar fans. A film that suffers from poor writing and execution, but has the leading man trying in vain to make something out of it.