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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”