Looking for a sharp thriller? Haiwaan isn’t it. Read our full review of Saif Ali Khan and Akshay Kumar’s latest release.
Quick Vibes
Genre: Neo-Noir Crime Thriller
Vibes: Exhausting thrills, logic-free zone
Film Credits
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Akshay Kumar, Boman Irani, Pahal Ashok Chaudhary, Saiyami Kher, Shriya Pilgaonkar, Sharib Hashmi, late Asrani, Rajesh Sharma, Rajpal Yadav
Director: Priyadarshan
Writers: Priyadarshan, Abhilash Nair (screenplay), Rohan Shankar (screenplay and dialogues)
Story
Haiwaan opens with a tattooed menace taking a dip into the water like pure villain energy. The frame then shifts to Shyam Rane (Saif Ali Khan), a visually-impaired man who carries more weight than most. His once-proud family in Konkan is buried under debts, and he is hustling to get his younger sister married. Life forced him to grow up early after losing his parents, but it also made him oddly versatile. His father pushed him into wrestling, his mother into music, and now he is a blind guy who can throw a punch, strum a tune, and crack parent jokes. His senses are razor sharp, almost superhuman.
When he is not juggling family drama, Shyam works as a maintenance manager in a Mumbai high-rise. He is fiercely loyal to Pradhan (Boman Irani), a retired chief justice whose past mistakes are about to catch up with him. Enter Parshuram Gokhale (Akshay Kumar), a man wrongfully jailed who lost his family and now wants revenge.
As ACP Varsha, played by Saiyami Kher, tracks a killer wiping out entire bloodlines across Maharashtra, Parshuram murders Pradhan and sets his sights on the judge’s daughter Nandini (Pahal Ashok Chaudhary). Shyam, her guardian, refuses to let blindness stop him from becoming her protector.
With a shady maid, her violent ex, and a hare-brained cop, Haiwaan spins into a chaotic thriller where revenge, and survival are supposed to clash in every frame.
What’s Yay
Saif Ali Khan’s performance carries quiet honesty. The visual palette in some places is interesting.
What’s Nay
The film grabs every worn‑out thriller trick and the suspense slips away faster than the plot can catch it.
Writing And Direction
Haiwaan treats character arcs like cardboard cutouts. Instead of letting its people grow, it hands out ready‑made caricatures. Saif Ali Khan works hard to give his blind hero some soul, but the script only lets him show off his super senses. Akshay Kumar’s villain fares no better, stuck as pure menace with no space to explore the pain behind his rage.
The real head‑slap comes from Priyadarshan himself. Remaking his own Malayalam film, the Mohanlal-led Oppam (2016), he had years to fix the holes but chose to copy them wholesale in his Hindi remake. Instead of sharpening the story for a fresh audience, he simply drags the old flaws into a new language. The result is less reinvention and more déjà vu, only with bigger stars and the same broken bones.
Cops who forget basic training and engage in brutality, laughable security lapses, and logic gaps that invite the killer in remain untouched. Some of the secondary characters feel like they wandered in from another film.
Even the plot twists in Haiwaan arrive with all the subtlety of a blaring foghorn. Long before the movie tries to hit you with any reveal, the writing has already dropped so many heavy-handed hints that you are just waiting for the characters to catch up to what you figured out three scenes ago.
By the time the film drags itself to Dehradun for the big showdown, your brain already feels cooked. Closer to the climax, the film even waves a Dil Chahta Hai reunion. That little burst of nostalgia tries hard to wake you up, but it cannot rescue the Saif-Akshay starrer from frying whatever patience you had left.
Performances
Saif Ali Khan brings absolute sincerity to a role that requires him to play a blind, wrestling, guitar-strumming superhero with sharp senses. He takes the absolute absurdity of the script so seriously that you almost forget that he is fighting bad guys purely by vibe and earwax.
Akshay Kumar’s Parshuram is pitched as a chilling psycho‑thriller villain, but what lands on screen feels more like a parody. Instead of radiating menace, the actor plays the part like a stage caricature, standing in obvious spots. The suspense scenes that should crawl under your skin fall flat. Further, the writing strips his character of any real psychological depth or chilling subtlety, leaving Kumar with nothing to do except scowl and glare. When a killer in a nun’s outfit makes you laugh instead of shiver, you know the performance has lost its bite.
Boman Irani delivers with conviction, as if he is in a different, better movie. Shriya Pilgaonkar’s character is presented in such a way that it comes across as a glam girl moonlighting in housekeeping. Saiyami Kher does her best, but the half‑baked script leaves her with little more than worried expressions. A comedy skit between Asrani and Sharib Hashmi feels like a lost clip from an old Priyadarshan slapstick film accidentally glued onto this thriller.
Tech Check
M.S. Aiyyappan’s editing scissors fail to stop Haiwaan from becoming a physically tiresome experience with its runtime that slips over two and a half hours.
The cool color grade does more heavy lifting than the script, quietly building an atmosphere that feels uneasy even when the story itself stumbles.
In Haiwaan, water acts as a recurring thematic element that tracks the shifting power dynamic between Shyam and Parshuram. It begins as a symbol of twisted rebirth in the opening frame, when Akshay’s Parshuram rises from the depths like vengeance itself. As the narrative unfolds, it transforms into a tool of dread; the splashed water on the floor in the basement scenes leaves a helpless Shyam visually and symbolically drowning in a situation way out of his control. In the second half, when Shyam pushes Parshuram into the water, the element turns into an equalizer, stripping away the villain’s visual dominance and forcing him into an environment where Shyam’s heightened senses take over.
From the casual splash during a routine car wash to the shot of water-soaked shoes dragging across a wet terrace, water constantly mirrors the relentless, inescapable trail of danger closing in on the characters. Cinematographer Divakar Mani effectively transforms water into a visual character with his lens.
Music
‘Mera Hero Hai Woh’ and ‘Rangiyara’ are hummable, but inside the film they barely matter. Take them out and nothing changes.
The Final Shot
Saif Ali Khan-Akshay Kumar starrer Haiwaan promises to serve a sharp, high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse, but only succeeds in playing a tedious game of cat-and-mouse with your patience. Watch it only if you want to see a sincere Saif fight off plot holes and water-soaked logic!
