Loosely based on a true story, Vedaa follows the story of a former soldier who helps a Dalit girl overcome the atrocities that the latter has to face at the hands of the villagers. Will they survive the onslaught? I failed to latch on to the warning that was so evident on the film’s poster that left me completely oblivious of the fact that this may well have been a film in the franchise of Satyameva Jayate, and the result would still have been the same. The tagline of ‘A Fight To Protect The Constitution Of India’ was absolutely atrocious and mindnumbing given the laughable result that I was witness too. The second hour will go down as the worst of this year by a countrymile, wherein the excitement of the viewers were reduced to a whimper amidst unintentional laughs that were honestly uncontrollable beyond a point. Such was the sketchy screenplay standing at a whopping length of 150 minutes that it left me bruises on my face owing to the frequency of face-palming that I resorted to in the second hour. This section will contain spoilers!

The drama does decently well with the setup, introducing the viewers to the protagonist Vedaa, a girl belonging to the lower caste while aspiring to be a boxer much against the difficulties that she is subjected to in her village. Almost as a parallel plot-point, you are introduced to Abhimanyu, a soldier in the Indian Army who defies orders while killing off a terrorist who had previously killed off his wife, in an incredibly choreographed sequence that never quite felt a part of this world. His character seemed like an extension of Kabir from Pathaan albeit devoid of any the slightest of flinches of expressions on his face. As luck would have it, the two worlds collide even as Vedaa is treated like a third class citizen of the country by a local village authority that puts up a facade in front of the media while having conniving intentions of harm and deceit. And even as Vedaa finds a silent support in the form of Abhi, the atrocities continue leading to a shocking chain of events right before the brainfade begins.

The drama here is a masterclass on how to pick a good subject and completely derail it with some mind numbing sequences that have no identity of their own. The proceedings here run about like a headless chicken. Firstly at the halfway mark, why would the antagonist decide to suddenly play a game of cat and mouse with the protagonists by giving them a lead of ’10 steps’. Oh Lord, so funny! But the fun doesn’t end there, it continues throughout the chase even wity the drama offering regular pitstops – one at a random relative’s place of Vedaa who suddenly turns table on them. The other being at a temple wherein the protagonist has to chop off her hair in order to prevent herself from being recognized, only to be caught in the very next scene. ROFL! All this, even as Vedaa decides that she wants to visit the court to obtain justice(why randomly when you have a beefed up superhero by your side?).

The drama is confused on what it wants to say, and stand for. Is it a film about women empowerment? Is it a film on the atrocities faced by the lower caste members? Is it a mass masala entertainer? See I have no issues with either of them but atleast there should be some head or tail to the writing by definitely picking one stream. To give you a perspective, such is the poor writing that the crucial plot-points of the protagonist being a Dalit and aspiring to be a boxer were conveniently forgotten in the second hour. The core issue could have been anything given the turn of events, even as you needed an adrenaline pumping male to carry out the action with the protagonist barely getting a punch to execute.

The events leading to the final act had me laughing uncontrollably. Remember Vedaa wanted to go to court? Well she does(yes, just like that, randomly walking into the cabin of the judge) even as an even more random shootout takes place. The center of the revenge saga was Vedaa but it was Abhimanyu who was on a killing spree, almost like being a ‘runner’ for the injured batsman(wait, the runner here volunteered to bat as well). The sequence was so hilarious that even after being shot multiple times, the protagonist has the strength to not only get up but mouth a dialogue about women empowerment and how Vedaa is the end of the road for the protagonist(implying that she would probably kill him), before killing him himself! And even before that, the two characters are so close to each other that the audience did burst out laughing almost in anticipation for a kiss(this is not made up). Such is the flimsy writing that completely destroys the relevancy subject of the subject while completely making a mockery of the screenplay.