Jaat, the latest Sunny Deol starrer that marks the debut of Telugu filmmaker Gopichand Malineni in Hindi, is the new addition to the list of mediocre mass films from Bollywood that is struggling to find its lost identity. Malineni, who is known for making these over-the-top mass masala films in Telugu, has placed his Hindi movie in the south itself, and the only thing North about this movie is the casting of Sunny Deol and the backdrop of the character. With an endless number of torsos and the cliched hero single-handedly delivering justice taking over the stage, this dialogue-heavy film is mostly enjoyable if you approach it as a spoof comedy because the reason for the whole conflict in the movie is a plate of Idli.
So, the story takes place in a village in Andhra Pradesh that is ruled by a dreaded gangster named Ranatunga, an illegal immigrant from Sri Lanka. The villagers are scared of him as he makes them agree to do anything he wants using brute force. To this deserted, lawless setting comes a Jaat man. His encounter with some of the local gangsters eventually results in his meeting with the villain Ranatunga. What we see in Jaat is how this guy ultimately ends up being the savior of the villages that were practically governed by Ranatunga.
Usually, when this kind of template movie shows you the entry of a hero who restores justice, we get to see a solid enough reason for the hero to be a part of the good versus bad fight. Even though the hero is ultimately shown as the lone warrior of justice who can be a “one-man army,” the reason why he gets entangled in all of this is a plate of Idli. I was actually happy that Gopichand was aware of the fact that the “Idli” dialogue was becoming funny with each iteration. While the first half was bearable in terms of lack of logic, the second half, where our leading man gets to know the history of the village, the movie really goes into that Jai Balayya mode.
The flashback portion is a gore fest. Gopichand’s idea of showing the emotional burden of the villagers is filled with brutal killings that have only one mode, which is beheading. To make our hero a favorite of the women and also to make his justice-seeking mission more impactful, many women are getting molested in the story. The whole President-CBI subplot in the film is extremely funny. By this time, you may have guessed that there will be a big reveal about the identity of this uninvited vigilante. And you are right, and the identity has to do with the hot-selling trope in Indian cinema these days.
Sunny Deol, as the mystery man, is screaming his mass dialogues at 0.5x speed, similar to the current dialogue delivery style of Suresh Gopi. The role is written keeping in mind his on-screen persona as the physics defier in North India. The hero of Jaat is basically Tara Singh in an urban costume in a rural village. They have even recreated the handpump scene using a fan in this movie – fan service is done using a fan. Randeep Hooda, the Hindi-speaking Sri Lankan living in Andhra Pradesh, was pretty cool in many scenes. He looked pretty convincing as someone who can be such a monster and give a tough time to our Jaat “Rocky Bhai.”
Saiyami Kher, as SI Vijaya Lakshmi, is pretty much in the shadows, playing this helpless officer delivering some theatrical dialogues in key moments. Vineet Kumar Singh as Somulu is another performance where you see an excellent actor doing a poorly written one-note character. Regina Cassandra is the only actor who knows and speaks Tamil in the whole Sri Lankan Tamil family of the villain. Gopichand Malineni sort of achieves gender equality in brutality through that character as Regina’s character is leading the rape and beheading in a couple of sequences in the film. Jagapathi Babu is assigned the role of that guy who speaks highly of the hero to his superiors.
Remember that Vekkeda Vedi sequence from Padmashree Dr. Saroj Kumar? Well, some of the moments in the climax of this movie, where Sunny Deol is using almost all kinds of guns we have seen in the post-Kaithi action movies made in India, will remind you of that spoofy scene from the Sreenivasan starrer. I do know the fact that you are not supposed to use too much of your brain while watching this kind of films that exist in a Newton-free parallel universe. But the redundancy of having to watch the same kind of story with high frame-rate visuals feels like a shortage of creativity that should be called out.
With an endless number of torsos and the cliched hero single-handedly delivering justice taking over the stage, this dialogue-heavy film is mostly enjoyable if you approach it as a spoof comedy.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
