Director - Tejas Prabha Vijay Deoskar
Cast - Mahesh Manjrekar, Renuka Shahane, Subodh Bhave, Siddharth Bodke
Writer - Neha Shitole
Producer - Luv Ranjan And Ankur Garg
Duration – 129 Minutes
 
If Hitchcock spent a summer in rural Maharashtra sipping cutting chai and binge-watching Vadh, he might’ve dreamed up something a lot like Devmanus. Tejas Deoskar’s Marathi remake of the 2022 sleeper hit gives us a tale of murder, morality, and middle-class mayhem—served with a steaming side of emotional ras and spicy visual masala.
 
Our protagonist is Keshav, played with restrained brilliance by Mahesh Manjrekar, who trades in his usual villainous swag for a pair of creaky slippers, a constantly furrowed brow, and the air of a man whose life smells faintly of turmeric and despair. Opposite him is Renuka Shahane, glowing with quiet strength as Laxmi, a sari-weaving goddess with more grace in her sighs than most actors have in monologues.
 
But let’s talk villains. Siddharth Bodke’s Dilip is peak sleaze. Gold chains, evil chuckles, and an aura of pure ghee-coated menace. He’s the kind of man whose ringtone is probably a remix of "Tu Cheez Badi Hai Mast Mast" and whose idea of foreplay is ruining your mortgage. When he asks Keshav to pimp out a neighbour in exchange for waiving debt, you want to climb into the screen and slap him with a thesaurus of cuss words.
 
Keshav obliges in a more cinematic way—cue the murder. What follows is not exactly a taut crime thriller, but more of a morality play doing cartwheels in a Lavani costume. There’s mythological metaphor, a pilgrimage to Pandharpur, and a song-dance number from Sai Tamhankar that arrives like a glitter bomb in a sepia-toned art film. Does all of it belong in the same movie? Maybe not. But is it fun? Oh, absolutely.
 
The screenplay dips into melodrama now and then, but the dialogues have a bite, and the police subplot (with Subodh Bhave moonlighting as a morally wobbly inspector) keeps things zipping. The climax delivers a twist—not quite a Nolan-level mind-bender, but enough to make you go “Oho!” while munching chakli.
 
Devmanus isn’t flawless, but it’s full of flavour. Think of it as a pressure cooker of suppressed rage, simmering guilt, and social critique—whistling its way to a deliciously dramatic release. Watch it for Manjrekar’s transformation, Shahane’s gravitas, and a plot that asks: how saintly can a “man of god” stay when his world turns hellish?