‘Chhaava’ (2025) Movie Review - Laxman Utekar As A Poor Man’s Bhansali

Nothing in Laxman Utekar's filmography suggests that he has the skill to pull off a large-scale epic, given he has been found fumbling in the arena of small-town comedies and intimate Hindi dramas. As a director, Utekar has given us slogs like Luka Chuppi, Mimi and Zara Hatke Zara Bachke, while as a cinematographer, he has abused our eyes with clinkers like Blue, 102 Not Out, and Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya. In Chhaava, Utekar continues to bungle his work as a director, but thankfully, he has given the cinematography job to someone else. In the hands of cinematographer Saurabh Goswami (Sector 36, Munjya, Jalsa, Tumhari Sulu), the frames in Chhaava look clean and colorful. The scenes with the Maratha characters, especially the one where Sambhaji (Vicky Kaushal) is crowned, are blown up with so many colors that the screen becomes a painter's canvas. The scenes with the Mughals, on the other hand, get a white color filter, making their green stand out as a sign of danger. A creative filmmaker would have played with these two contrasting colors. Utekar, however, merely uses them as embellishments. The Marathas get a roaring anthem, while the Mughals bring with them a mournful poem. Before sealing the latter's fate through a tedious climax, the filmmaking itself declares Marathas as the rightful winners. The game is rigged - no wonder Aurangzeb (Akshaye Khanna) looks so bitter.

Chhaava is what you get when filmmakers begin to think that historical epic means big sets and loud action set pieces. Utekar has combined CGI with physically constructed environments and appears more focused on showcasing the labor put into the creation of onscreen visuals than on the storytelling itself. The director is so obsessed with beautiful shots that he displays more feelings for the bricks and the walls. He often captures the crowd from a distance (mostly from above) so that the audience can admire his... crowd work. These moments fail to convey a sense of scale or grandeur. When the camera flies like a bird to survey a large army on the ground, it doesn't instill a feeling of intimidation. Rather, we just end up deducing that this shot was completed with CGI work. For Utekar, Chhaava is nothing more than an excuse to ostentatiously display wealth and violence. Sambhaji might have had too much stamina, but the director loses his vigor with the hero-entry shot. With angry eyes and hands determined to kill every Mughal, Sambhaji comes riding on the screen in slow motion. One can almost feel Utekar straining himself, which is why, as soon as the horse leaps across the barrier, the entire movie comes to a halt. Utekar becomes so tired that he never again manages to generate momentum. Hence, he goes for cheap shortcuts to elicit emotions. The director places a child crying for his mother in the middle of the battle. Sambhaji carries this kid to his mother, but he also, um, you know, burns their home, so the gesture merely turns into a shallow act of kindness. But Utekar doesn't stop with this child. He also tries to pull at our heartstrings through a young Sambhaji weeping for his mother. The audience, meanwhile, cries for a better filmmaker.

According to Wikipedia, Sambhaji was such a fan of sensual pleasures that his father had to put him in confinement. He had also apparently tried to "pollute" a Brahmin woman. The Sambhaji we see in Chhaava comes across as a pure virgin. He might have impregnated his wife, Yesubai Bhonsale (Rashmika Mandanna), through his sweet glances. Surely, there must be better ways to paint a ruler with shades of greatness. How did Sambhaji rule his kingdom? What policies did he introduce? How did he dispense justice in the court? As far as Utekar is concerned, Sambhaji was influential because his screams were apt for Dolby speakers. Of course, Kaushal shouts so loudly that his veins seem ready to burst. His acting, too, is similarly loud, and like Utekar's filmmaking, it's terribly labored. Both the actor and the director desperately seek acclaim and applause. The PR machine will work overtime to highlight their efforts because there is nothing else worth talking about in Chhaava - it's a debacle.

If the filmmakers had really believed in Sambhaji's valor, they wouldn't have surrounded him with such weak villains. Divya Dutta's Soyarabai makes evil faces, and Aurangzeb spends his days eating grapes and dreaming of capturing his opponent. No one gives you the impression that they can overpower the main character. There is a lame twist in the second half that fails to serve any purpose because the movie already tells us who the bad guys are. Chhaava is a disaster on so many levels that Utekar makes some characters look at the camera before their death to deliver their final words directly to the audience. He tries to save his film through our tears. Utekar's biggest failure as a director is that he is unable to sustain a mood for more than five seconds. His movies aren't unified by a single tone or vision. Every scene exists in bits and pieces. The images in Chhaava, no matter how clear and clean, remain toneless. Utekar proceeds with the sole aim of pushing the buttons of the audience. Even in this respect, he is so inept that he merely attempts to press two buttons: Gleeful and Sad. After a while, he only manages to evoke one emotion - Boredom, which is something you intensely feel during the last 30 or so minutes. Sambhaji's capture is your cue to run away from the theater. After underlining the character's magnificence through dialogues and poems, Chhaava shows it through visuals of torture. Sambhaji is turned into a superhero; even mythical figures from the Marvel universe would hang their heads in shame after seeing his pain tolerance. I would like to say that physical torture becomes cinematic torture, but Chhaava begins to feel like a chore long before it arrives at this particular moment. Moreover, the connection between Sambhaji's physical suffering and Yesubai's mental pain could have landed in a Sanjay Leela Bhansali drama, but Utekar comes across as a poor man's Bhansali. When the two characters unhappily and simultaneously say, "Jagadambe," you, too, pray to your deity to protect you from such awful experiences.

The only interesting observation one makes while watching Chhaava is that the Mughals weren't entirely villainous. They, after all, allow two men to complete their poetry competition. One of the soldiers even politely asks Sambhaji to close his eyes before he proceeds to damage them. You know the film is in trouble when the audience starts to wonder whether the man on the screen got lucky because now he won't have to watch this colossal washout. But that's Laxman Utekar Film for you. No bite, no substance - only inadvertent humor.

Final Score- [3/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times