Breathe: Into The Shadows Season 2 is taut even if flawed

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The second season of the new Breathe: Into the Shadows, itself a sequel to Breathe with a different story, is a taut thriller that keeps you hooked after it becomes gripping, which is around midway in its 8 episodes.

In the first part, we come to know that Dr. Avinash Sabharwal (Abhishek A. Bachchan) had a traumatic childhood, because of which he developed a Multiple Personality Disorder. While Avinash as an honest and conscientious doctor saves lives, the alter-ego he gets, J, spares no one who in any way harmed or hurt Avinash.

Avinash is married to Abha (Nithya Menen) and has an adorable kid, Siya (Ivana Kaur). At the end of Season 1, he was placed in a mental asylum, and this season begins with the doctors, led by Dr. Siddharth (Sameer Kevin Roy), happy with his progress, as J has stopped surfacing as per them.

But he has not! On J’s list are still left the remaining of the ten heads of Ravan (as they are termed)—seven people including a tycoon, a doctor, a jailed goon and so on. Another psychiatric patient, Victor (Naveen Kasturia), provides the incentive for J to begin his murders again, starting obviously with Avinash’s staged escape from the asylum. Victor gets a rare gratification whenever J achieves his heinous goal. In the beginning, Victor even blackmails Abha into killing his own father, Neel (Ravi Behl), who has also hurt J. Neel has also been a key cause of Victor’s traumatized makeup.

The dedicated Mumbai cop, Kabir Sawant (Amit Sadh) is again placed in charge of the case when the killings begin once more. With a dogged team (Hrishikesh Joshi and Srikant Verma), he goes hard and fast after the killer, whose escape from the asylum is kept a secret from the media. But Kabir too has not had a smooth personal innings, though he has learnt that life is about moving on.

Kabir, Victor and Avinash meet Abha and Siya as and when needed, and Abha has her own role in the developments, as she is hell-bent on reuniting with her husband. She feels that he is innocent unlike J, whom she wants to get rid of for her daughter’s and their sake. But J tells her he will go for good only after he completes the deadly mission of exterminating all the 10 heads. But his last intended victim is a shocker. And then there is a further twist.

Breathe faces the same issue that most thrillers of today do: for tautness, they compromise in terms of logic. The loopholes are quite gaping and some are downright audacious and ridiculous in all aspects—characters, incidents and more. The most gaping one is that Kabir contacts Avinash/J at least twice on phone, but they make no effort to trace the mobilephone so that they can arrest him!

There are also a medley of back stories justifying, in a way, why J wants to bump them off, and a silly angle of a Delhi cop (Zakir Hussain) and a politician (Akashdeep Sabir, also a co-producer) that really has only nuisance value.

The show is redeemed majorly by its major and minor characters. Abhishek A. Bachchan’s expressions are fabulous, as is his dialogue delivery, as the Indian term goes. His body language is also impeccable, come Avinash or J, and he manages to move us emotionally in many a sequence as the former.

Amit Sadh is extremely impressive and his intensity lifts many a sequence, including his face-offs with other key characters. Nithya Menen is alright, as is Saiyami Kher. Ivana Kaur as Siya is a darling and Zakir Hussain effective as always. I must make a special mention of Hrishikesh Joshi and Srikant Verma as Kabir’s assistants, and of Mantra Mugdh as the blind ventriloquist. And a distinction to Naveen Kasturia as Victor—where was this great talent all the years? His expressions alone are fantastically done.

I hear that the producer and director are coming together for a thriller film. Here’s hoping that they keep the script taut but glitch-free. And the technical aspects as upbeat as in this series, Karan Kulkarni’s music is repetitious but mood-oriented and the camerawork by S. Bharathwaaj magnificent among them.

Rating: ***

Amazon Prime Video presents Abunduntia Entertainment’s Breathe: Into The Shadows Season 2 Produced by: Vikram Malhotra Created & Directed by: Mayank Sharma Written by: Mayank Sharma, Sunil Das, Abhijeet Shirish Deshpande, Priya Saggi, Arshad Syed & Vikram Tuli      Music: Karan Kulkarni Starring: Abhishek A. Bachchan, Amit Sadh, Nithya Menen, Saiyami Kher, Ivana Kaur, Shrikant Verma, Hrishikesh Joshi, Nizhalgal Ravi, Vibhawari Deshpande, Naveen Kasturia, Akashdeep Sabir, Ravi Behl, Kuljeet Singh, Himika Bose, Mahesh Balraj, Rohit Khurana, Seema Biswas, Mantra Mugdh, Sameer Kevin Roy & others