Jai Gangaajal

Jai Gangaajal has everything that you find in a Prakash Jha movie, except the director doing a prominent role in the film. Having said that, it isn’t as intense like most of Mr. Jha’s films. The agenda this time again is the purification of system and the characters are cops and politicians. But there isn’t much of a multi layered aspect to the theme and it just focuses on a single case, which in my opinion restricted the movie.

Abha Mathur IPS is the central protagonist of this movie. She gets posted as the SP of Bankipur district. The political scenario of the district has this cruel MLA Babloo Pandey ruling there with the help of CI B.N Singh. What changes Abha makes to the district through her strictness and how it all ends up is what Jai Gangaajal all about.

As I said, it isn’t that intense as the 2003 movie Gangaajal. This time Prakash Jha has picked up the issue of farmer suicide and mixed it with his usual backdrop of political monopoly aided by the police forces. May be because of the practicality factor of showing a woman police officer as a mass heroin, Prakash Jha himself carried the burden of playing a crucial character in the movie and he has done an impressive job. With the plot getting revealed in the beginning portion itself, there isn’t much left to keep us guessing about the development.

Priyanka Chopra has the look and attitude to be the willful Abha Mathur who wants to create a change in the current scenario. The actress fumbles slightly with the fully hindi dialogues of Prakash Jha at some points. Prakash Jha was really good as B.N Singh and I loved the way he portrayed the various shades of the character.  Manav Kaul was really good and so was Ninad Kamat as the major antagonists.

Prakash Jha has made the movie in his typical style adding the raw and rough side of political power in the backdrop of rural India. His characters have the same attitude we have seen in other films of Mr. Jha. The story’s development also has the usual elements like threatening, one man shows, crookedness and torture before the good winning over the bad. Some ideas like the rebel movement of “suicide” revenge looked too theatrical. The heroic scenes we used to see in Prakash Jha films were missing. The technical aspects were fine. They have chopped those boring fight scenes we saw in the trailer. Music doesn’t have much of significance in this film.

On the whole Jai Gangaajal is the usual Prakash Jha movie with fewer surprises. The kind of roughness the director maintains and the grace in the performances keeps the movie in the passable zone. It is an average tale in the backdrop of current sociopolitical scenario.