Jawan MOVIE DETAIL

Both Nayanthara playing Azad’s love interest, and Deepika Padukone, paired opposite SRK Sr, hold the eye when they are around, the latter leaving more impact than the former. There’s also a little girl, cutesy but sweet, to aim at our heart-strings. You can see how much fun the writers have had to bring back certain names in other classic SRK films (Kaveri Amma from ‘Swades’), as well as actors who spark well with him (both Priyamani and Deepika were his able companions in his previous Southern sojourn in Rohit Shetty’s ‘Chennai Express’).

Vijay Sethupathi is the big bad wolf here, as a crooked arms dealer-cum-businessman, the kind of guy whose ill-gotten gains powers governments (ooh, now who is this character based on?). He’s always dressed in black, scowling and growling and being menacing, and in a couple of places, does manage to leave a mark. But even Sethupathi knows that this film is all about SRK, so in the rest of it he looks as if he is just going through the paces.

After a kinetic, zingy first hour, the film slumps in bits, especially when it dives into the part housed in a women’s prison, where all inmates are very stylishly dressed in pale green uniforms with nary a filthy corner to be seen, and the nobility starts becoming too much handle. A very young woman ( Dogra) is made to look middle-aged. My eyes started glazing over at the colourless songs-and-dances: not one stays with you when you leave the theatre.

But then comes the last act, in which both SRK's get together, and along with a big Bollywood star in a walk-on part playing an ‘I love Onam’ officer-with-a-Malayali-wife, bring the whole thing to a boil. It involves, gulp, truckloads of stolen EVM machines, and a sequence which is jaw-dropping in its audacity, given our polarised times, in which a superstar, so reviled in the last few years, buoyed only by the massive success of him appearing In and As ‘Pathaan’, in which he reclaims his identity loud and proud, exhorts us to use that finger for voting in the right person, ignoring jaat-paat-and-dharm. And that one also got the audience clapping.

Yes, as expected, the very meta ‘baap-beta’ line brought the house down. But Shah Rukh Khan extends that message, from his family to his watan, turning into the jawan-hero of India that is Bharat, and Bharat that is India.

Jawan movie director - Atlee
Jawan movie cast - Shah Rukh Khan, Vijay Sethupathi, Nayanthara, Priyamani, Sanya Malhotra, Deepika Padukone, Sunil Grover, Riddhi Dogra
Jawan movie rating - 3.5 stars