A little boy with a congenital lung disorder, a loving father, an alcoholic cop whose past haunts him daily, and unsuspecting victims who die gruesome deaths – Amazon’s latest web-series, Breathe, follows the travails of a father who goes rogue to keep his son alive.
With R Madhavan headlining the show, one would expect good storytelling and superior acting; however, as only four episodes out of eight are out, there isn’t much to rave about in terms of story and acting.
Playing Danny Mascarenhas, a football coach who loves his son deeply and appears to be god fearing, Madhavan is boxed into the role of a loving father who gets his Breaking Bad moment. Much like Walter White, he goes on a rampage killing people, all for the sake of his son. While Madhavan is able to almost pull off this good-guy-gone-bad role, there are instances when he appears like he’s masking guilt and covering it up, like a little puppy who may be in trouble. Subtlety is conveniently missing in this web series.
Amit Sadh, who plays Kabir Sawant, a troubled alcoholic cop, is beyond understandable. When you have an actor who shows a bunch of emotions all at once, there’s hardly a clue if he’s trying to be nice or abusive. Sadh plays the stereotypical drunk man who hangs on to his turbulent past, while everybody around him has clearly moved on. And, since he is the titular ‘broken’ man, everybody around him seems to cut him some slack even when he indulges in some serious douchey behaviour like taunting his wife at work and at home.
Other characters like the little boy with the lung disease, his grandmother, Sawant’s colleague, and the victims, seem like they had the license to exaggerate everything. For instance, in what would have otherwise been an extremely emotional moment, where a dying son tells his father during story time that he doesn’t want to die, boy instead makes it sound like he doesn’t want to go to school. So when a tear runs down Danny’s eye, you aren’t entirely convinced.
Similarly, many other scenes are pretty hard to believe. When Danny stalks his victims before murdering them, he manages to go completely invisible, whether it’s a housing complex with security cameras and watchmen all around, or a movie set with restricted access. He seems to get away with it all, and for someone who visits the church, his wife’s grave, and has a cross around his neck, his car, and even a giant one right outside his house, it’s hard to believe that he would go this bad and still be that god-fearing.
Recommended
The show isn’t necessarily a bad watch either. There are moments when you wonder if Danny would manage to kill his victims or not, the list of organ donors whose death would put his son’s name on the top of the list. Since Danny isn’t a professional killer, one watches little details to see if he would make a mistake. But, the narrative isn’t gripping or speedy that way; Breathe makes for a slow watch – in the first few episodes, at least.
*****
The Breathe review is a Silverscreen original article. It was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the movie. Silverscreen.in and its writers do not have any commercial relationship with movies that are reviewed on the site.