Breathe Into the shadows Review: Not a breath of fresh air

Breathe: Into the Shadow (Prime Video)
Director: Mayank Sharma
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Nithya Menen
Rating: 2.5/5

A mysterious man kidnaps a child and waits for nine months to put forth his demand: Child’s psychiatrist father Dr Avinash Sabharwal (Abhishek Bachchan) must kill someone.

As a father who wants to ‘save’ his child, Avinash yields, and gets into a seemingly total downward spiral. Or is it? Heartbroken Kabir Sawant (Amit Sadh) from Breathe Season 1 takes a transfer to Delhi. And the investigation of the murders committed by Avinash lands on his lap. The cat-and-mouse game begins.

The masked man with a limp is rich and capable enough to keep two hostages alive, treats them with compassion and keeps a tab on them with multiple CCTVs, uses fancy gadgets to achieve his objectives. There are moments that sound too convenient and flawed, making Avinash do out-of-character things.

What seems like a scripting flaw/ plot loophole is justified in later episodes. However, that does not absolve the Breathe team of the crimes committed on the humble viewer waiting for quality content on OTT.

The script brings in the concept of Ravan, to justify the acts of what seems like the work of a twisted mind. For a show like this, that searches for shades of grey in the act of a man who would go to any length to “save” his family, the boxing of Ravan as a negative symbolism is really out of character - just not expected.

There is no real remorse portrayed in the “good” side of the multiple personalities that actually kills people. Even Walter White in Breaking Bad showed more remorse than this one. There is no justice for the medical student who missed a year due to the madness of the lead role, or other dead victims. He just gets away with murders, retaining his mental disorder.

However, this does not save the show. Nothing is unique, fresh or noteworthy except Nitya Menen’s performance. Junior Bachchan and Amit Sadh pale in front of her. However, her characterisation could have been a lot better. She gets reduced to a black-and-white character in the end.

Amit Sadh has a predictable storyline and performance. The duration would have reduced and it would have been easy on the viewer, if the character of Zeba Rizvi, played by Shraddha Kaul, and subplots related to her did not exist. They were neither interesting nor helpful for the main plot.

The less said about Abhishek Bachchan’s characterisation, the better. Supposed to be playing the role of a character with multiple personality disorder, he ends up playing a mixed personality. He must have gotten thoroughly confused about who he really should be and when, it comes out everywhere, with two characters mixed up.

What’s more, even psychiatry and psychology get mixed up in the show. Perhaps better research was needed before getting into writing on specialised fields.

Saiyami Kher does not have enough scope to show actual performance. There are pointless subplots which lead us nowhere, other than adding to the duration. For example, why do the kidnapped girls take so much effort to explore the tunnel when it leads them nowhere and helps them in no way? Why do they show Avinash and Kabir in the same frame in a traffic signal, when Kabir is headed to Nainital when nothing happens because of it later?

A few scenes inserted here and there, like the armchair political analysts who cannot help themselves but want to salvage Kashmir, the clash of Mumbai and Delhi Hindi languages etc bring in the much-needed relief from the often-jarring narration, to help the viewer actually breathe. But some of them end up being nauseating, cheap jokes.

After a while, the theme music starts overpowering the scenes, swallowing some of the moments where silence would have been better.

Is there any kind of ethical, moral message the show gives? If there are, they are just the wrong kind. That is yet another big disappointment.

To sum up, Breathe-Into the shadows lacks the meticulousness of the first season (which was just ahead of its time for Indian Originals, but not great going by international standards). It suffocates you. It allows you to take a peek into the shadows of human souls, without giving you the satisfaction of indulging in it in detail, in the process also telling a mediocre story.

It is yet another testimony to the fact that to make a name for quality, and to salvage itself, Indian teledrama/ OTT industry needs not just big names, but also good, powerful scripts.