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‘Haiwaan’ review: The blind hero isn’t bluffing but the film certainly is

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Shyam is the kind of all-seeing and all-knowing blind person the movies love. Shyam (Saif Ali Khan) knows how to wrestle and play musical instruments (skills he teaches too). He can also sing, write lyrics and dance.

Although we are told that his family back in the Konkan is facing a money crunch, and giving tuitions surely isn’t lucrative, Shyam lives in a swanky apartment building in Mumbai. Shyam is also his housing society’s super-efficient maintenance manager. That he has a heightened sense of hearing and smell is a given.

When his neighbour Pradhan, a retired chief justice of the Supreme Court, is stalked by a man he had previously convicted, Shyam offers to help. Parshuram (Akshay Kumar) has been killing the people who had him jailed. Only police inspector Varsha (Saiyami Kher) has cottoned on to this series of slaughters.

But Varsha isn’t the chief investigating officer when Pradhan (Boman Irani) is murdered and Parshuram decides to targets Pradhan’s daughter Nandini (Pahal Ashok Chaudhary) – who is being sheltered by Shyam. Instead of Varsha, Shinde (Sharib Hashmi) is in charge, hell-bent on destroying any expectation of basic intelligence from the Mumbai Police.

Priyadarshan’s Haiwaan is a Hindi remake of his Malayalam hit Oppam (2016), itself a mash...