What Ajay Devgan the star deserved, was a sharper director and a better script. In the end, there’s little else to Shivaay than the eye-watering locations (both in the Himalayas and in Bulgaria), and occasionally poignant moments between Devgan and the little girl who plays his daughter. Everything else is noise. Way too much noise.

Shivaay ultimately suffers from the malice of overdose. An overdose of action and an overdose of melodrama, both of which should have been chopped off at the editing table. As the director of the film, Ajay should have focused on keeping the story short and tightly edited.

Devgn’s stunts are a treat to watch, but that’s about it. Shivaay treks trough high altitudes, but the film keeps waiting for him to return to the valley with a string attached to his legs.

One can predict the knocks and punches and dives and VFX-aided saves without as much as batting an eyelid. Although I liked that one long take chase around the police headquarters, at best Shivaay is a terrific looking terrible film.

Visually, there is much going for this film, especially with cinematographer Aseem Bajaj making the most of the striking Balkan canvas and painting breathtakingly pretty pictures on it.

Overall, Ajay is unstoppable in Shivaay but you wish he wasn’t! Laced with visual excellence, you applaud his film’s larger than life canvas but despite the efforts, his second directorial venture fails to engage you emotionally.

Like the snow-covered mountains that form a backdrop to much of “Shivaay”, the film may have been meant to inspire awe, but the end result leaves you stone cold.

If you’re an adventure junkie, Shivaay is the film for you. And even if you aren’t, Shivaay will make you one. Prepare for action and stunts like never before.

Watch Shivaay if you have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE TO DO. Else watch a documentary on mountaineering. Or child trafficking. Or Bulgaria. Or whatever you want to. (Just a special mention for the company which made the tent that weathered pretty much everything.)

Shivaay seems high on never ending action and loud emotion. Visuals don’t fill the void of the missing storyline…

With  crisper editing and less melodrama, Shivaay could’ve been the best of the year. But the ‘more is less’ approach just doesn’t work out.

All said and done, Ajay Devgn fans will be watching it in any case but those who are still hooked to this, I will say that SHIVAAY is Ajay Devgn’s weakest Diwali gift since GOLMAAL. SHIVAAY must have started with the ambition to reach the highest peak but unfortunately, gets buried in the avalanche of a routine story that lacked any glory.

Why do we talk in terms of first-half, second-half? Because this is a Hindi movie — the best of which dip after the interval. You step back into the theatre, and realise, woah, this is one of those rare Bollywood movies that needn’t have existed after the interval at all. Absolutely nothing happens. Besides Devgn, who we know is happening anyway. So you sit back and enjoy Shivaay. Just please don’t ask why!

Shivaay is not the light fun crackerjack Diwali film you’d like to sit through this festive season. It is laden with an overbearing  darkness which eclipses all of the film’s efforts to pull us into its embrace.The proceedings get so edgy that they finally topple over.

Ajay Devgn’s visually rich film lacks Lord Shiva’s famed light-footedness…

On the whole, Shivaay is a slow and often boring human drama with very limited emotional appeal and little entertainment value. It may find favour with the masses and single-screen cinema audiences but its run in the multiplexes will not be smooth at all. Given the high price at which it has been acquired by the distributors, it will entail heavy losses to them.

Not a shred of originality in this father-daughter copy of ‘Taken’ plus ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’, unless you are fascinated by snow, tattoos, and foreign locales where really bad foreign people live. Ajay Devgn, has a huge fan following as an action hero does not disappoint, but the CGI finishing does. And you begin hating Kailash Kher singing annoyingly in the background during emotional scenes and the title song playing ad nauseam during the action scenes.

A perfect package of emotions, action, location and music along with everyone’s performance is the perfect Diwali gift you can give yourself and your family this weekend.

Shivaay has  spectacular action scenes, perhaps the best we have seen this year. Watch it for that and the emotional storyline of a father-daughter relationship.

Devgn has clearly put time and effort into his direction,but appears to have put less into his performance. Neither makes the grade. And let’s face it, there can only be one Liam Neeson.

Shivaay comes across as a film that wants to be more than a regular action film. It doesn’t quite achieve anything there. On the other hand, it loses out on being an out and out crowd-pleasing action film too.

There is a consistency of craft in Shivaay that is rarely seen in Hindi cinema. Like its relentless commitment towards slow motion. From the first shot to the last, everything moves s…l…o…w — the bullet that leaves the pistol to the teardrop that falls from the eye. No wonder the film turns out almost three hours long despite just a wisp of a story to tell.

Our Shivaay is as deluded as his director. He screams at his lady love, for, er…, getting pregnant with his child(?), emotionally blackmails her to keep the baby and then says he is not forcing her to change her decision. Dude, you just tried every trick in the book to dissuade her.

Performances are stable but the story is a let down. 172 minutes is a lot to bear some good butt kickin’. Ajay, hire some better writers next time and give the chillum a break!

The action is nasty and efficiently choreographed, but Shivaay does not have the power of Taken, which never wavers from its blunt tagline, “They took his daughter. He’ll take their lives.”

The heroes of the film are only the action and the cinematography, as said earlier; otherwise it isn’t worth your penny. 

The action espionage comes to a fall owing to its shaky script and nonsensical twists. As soon as you start to get some faith back in the story, it disarms your thoughts with absurd idiosyncrasies. 
One thing that shines from the first frame to the last scene is the brilliant cinematography and photography.