Breathe - Season 1 Review

This is one solid series I must say.

The plot is simple, a father named Danny (Madhavan) has a young son who is ill, and is to die in the next 6 months, and goes on a killing spree of organ donors to save his life. 

Episode 1 is a good episode, and does the set up necessary by introducing Danny's life, living with his mother and son, Josh. It sets up his love for both, and Josh's condition. 

Meanwhile we also see Kabir (Amit Sadh), an alcoholic cop who's depressed because of his daughter's death as she once fired his gun.

The characters and their inner struggles are introduced, which is what makes us care about them.

During the scenes where Danny is either planning out his crime scene, or any scene with tension in it, there's a suspense sound effect in it that is repeated more times than necessary. It seriously annoyed me.

Another one of my questions was that why did Danny not wear a mask? He can buy gloves and other equipment, but not a mask to cover himself. Why?

I quite liked the scenes where Danny executed the murders. Despite some illogical moments such as, how the hell are Mumbai's streets ever empty? How did Danny enter so many places? But on the bright side, we see his planning as set up, and it all comes back when the murders are happening, very reminiscent of Chekov's Gun.

After a couple murders, Danny and Kabir meet and the suspense only increases. It reminded me of Death Note where the cop, or the person on the side of the law is highly doubtful of the real killer, who claims not to be. Now of course, Death Note executed it better, but it reminded me of it, and that's a compliment.

The performances are quite stellar. My only minor issue with R. Madhavan's acting is that it feels like he is "acting." But to me, Madhavan's best moments are when he's lying about not being the killer and pretends to be innocent. Those scenes are when he is at his best. 

But by far, Amit Sadh gave the BEST performance with subtle nuances that only build on his character and made him feel like a real person. His depression and internal struggle felt more plausible and despite his behaviour, we get him. 

This show is the kind of story where the killer is our protagonist, as well as the cop. Danny apologises to his every victim, and it's great because it only reinforces the fact that he's doing this, not for pleasure or for the sake of it, but for his own personal reason, for someone else. He does the wrong things for the right reasons, which is why we care for him. He even is haunted by his victims only to remind him of his monstrous actions, but we understand that it needs to be done. 

The heart of the series is in the relationships between the characters that we care about. We don't root for Danny because he's killing people, we root for him because we know he's doing it for his son. It's sort of like Drishyam, where our protagonist is a father who goes to absolute lengths to protect his family. How, for them, it's more of a duty and responsibility. 

Danny has a negative change arc of unintentionally become a murderer, and Kabir has a positive change arc of getting over his daughter, and becoming a more healthier person. 

Is it perfect? No.

There are many unbelievable moments which made me question the logistics of how it happened. But it's a well made and written show that knows where it's heart is.

Thank Your for Reading

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