Jigra, a Hindi-language action thriller, marks Vasan Bala's latest directorial venture. Co-written with Debashish Irengbam, the film, produced by Dharma Productions and Eternal Sunshine Productions, hit theatres on October 11, 2024, coinciding with Vijayadashami. Alia Bhatt leads the cast as a troubled protagonist tasked with rescuing her brother, portrayed by Vedang Raina, from imprisonment. Principal photography, spanning from October 2023 to February 2024, took place in Mumbai and Singapore. The film's narrative centers on Bhatt's character and her perilous mission. However, Jigra's theatrical release was met with a mixed critical reception and ultimately proved a box-office disappointment. Despite the star power and the director's established reputation, the film failed to connect with audiences, resulting in a commercially unsuccessful run. The reasons behind this underperformance remain a subject of industry analysis.

Early on in the 1 hour 55 minutes film, a character asks Satya, ‘Toh kya Bachchan bananna hai?’ The question is meant as both set-up and punch-line.

Her reply, ‘Ab toh Bachchan hi bananna hai’, sets us up for the entire premise-cum-gist-raison d’etre of ‘Jigra’, in which Alia Bhatt’s Satya attempts to become a Bachchanesque hero, kicking and punching, hurt and hurting, falling down and getting up. And staying up.

Two things happen, as a result. The set-up, which has the stronger, more emotive parts of the film, is dispensed with much too quickly. And the punch-lines stretch for far too long over the rest of it, which uses a brother-sister relationship and a prison break to cobble together a plot, based on Yash Johar’s 1993 Sanjay Dutt-Sridevi starrer ‘Gumrah’.

Like the origin film, this one too uses a false drug charge to imprison Satya’s younger brother Ankur (Raina) in a foreign jail on an island in the South East Asian waters. Armed with nothing but her older sister’s protective instincts, honed through their troubled childhood, Satya switches to full rescue mode, hoovering up a couple of companions to aid her. Both Manoj Pahwa as Mr Bhatia, also desi, and Rahul Ravindran as Muthu, an islander, have loved ones on the inside: will the trio be successful in getting them out?

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The plotters take their time to come up with this and that, which isn’t great for the urgency a film like this needs to sustain right through, where each blow should feel like a punch in the gut. It isn’t as if we don’t get a couple of let’s-teach-these-convicts-a-lesson scenes, supervised by the prison boss played with full campy vigour by Vivek Gomber, reminding us of his recent role in the Disney show, ‘Lootere’. It gives Raina the few scenes he doesn’t have to share with Bhatt, and he’s quite convincing overall, building on the promise he showed in ‘The Archies’.

Actually, we never really think about the efficacy of the prison-break plan. Even if the movie is new Bollywood (there’s a smart-alecky line about three prisoners named Wong Kar-wai, Kim Ki-duk and John Woo, which you can believe the director coming up with glee), it is a legacy of old Hindi cinema. Have hero, will win. It is whether Alia Bhatt makes us believe in all that she does in the movie.

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Satya tells us she is a karate-trained fighter, so she is given not one, but two bare-knuckle fights, where she is bloodied and bruised but not beaten. She also drives a truck at breakneck speed. She also rappells up a wall, and holds her own as swarms of armed cops and cons surround her. She crushes glass skylights. And, of course, she stands like a shield against all that will hurt her ‘chota bhai.’ All of it ends up becoming too much Alia, too little everyone else.

Bhatt’s performances usually have at least a couple of distinctive notes. Here, badass replacing vulnerability, those edges are blunted. ‘Jigra’ becomes a stretch, of both patience and credulity.

Jigra movie cast: Alia Bhatt, Vedang Raina, Aditya Nanda, Manoj Pahwa, Vivek Gomber, Rahul Ravindran
Jigra movie director: Vasan Bala
Jigram movie rating: Two stars