The much-awaited trailer of "Shivaay", which Ajay Devgn has helmed as a leading man and director, is lengthy, running into almost four minutes of unrelieved tension.
Expectedly, there is a lot of Ajay in the trailer. Not just the visuals, but even a voiceover where his gravelly voice recites lines about Lord Shiva the destroyer, in a vein that suggests the actor is playing the god -- the destroyer of evil.
Which is fine. All screen heroes take on the dark elements. In "Shivaay", the confrontation between good and evil is situated right in the middle of a snow-covered mountainous landscape which imbues the entire panorama of the plot with a bleak depressing mood.
It's always a bad idea to do action film in icy locales. It's dangerous for the actors to perform and not half as thrilling for the audience to watch as filmmakers believe it to be.
Ajay as the action hero scores confidently and effectively in the trailer, in spite of treading on thin ice. The cars fly and collide in mid-air much in the same way that they do when Rohit Shetty directs Ajay. Except that Shetty makes the actor's stunts look far more enjoyable, and fun to watch.
This is a cheerless and humourless version of Shetty's action films. In the three-and-half-minute trailer, there was not a single smiling face.
Everyone is either killing or getting killed or running from killers. There is a blonde adolescent girl (playing, we presume Ajay's daughter) being touched creepily by a man who looks like a paedophile.
And this is supposed to be a Diwali release? What happened to all the bright lights associated with the festive season?