Jaat Movie Review
Starring: Sunny Deol, Randeep Hooda, Vineet Kumar Singh, Regina Cassandra, Ajay Ghosh
Direction: Gopichand Malineni
L. Ravichander
Gopichand Malineni has arrived! ‘Beware’ Victor Fleming (‘Gone with the Wind’) for grandeur, Francis Ford Coppola (‘Godfather’) for power and depiction of evil, Costa Gavras (‘Missing, Z’) for political gravitas, and Steven Spielberg (‘Schindler’s List’) for deathly reality bathed in poignance. This film-maker in his debut indulgence at storytelling against a pan-India Telugu backdrop for all of 153 minutes packs it all in: ‘social drama’, ‘rich-poor divide’, ‘corrupt and honest’ representatives of the law, ‘die-hard patriots’, ‘music’, ‘women empowerment’, ‘thrills’, ‘adrenaline-oozing fights’ and everything else that one could look for in a cinematic a-la-carte. Our own Sandeep Reddy Vanga and even Anil Sharma (of the ‘Gadar’ franchise) could also feel ‘threatened’ in their niche space. Imagine the ‘talent’ and ‘promise’ in a debutant filmmaker who for scale has ‘matched’ the skills of K. Asif (‘Mughal-e-Azam’), Mehboob Khan (‘Mother India’), Ramesh Sippy (‘Sholay’), S.S. Rajamouli (‘Baahubali’), and the likes – who have the pride of place in the gallery of the opulent.
Kick-starting in the backwaters of Jafna, Sri Lanka, we have four immigrants: Ranatunga (Randeep Hooda), his brother Somdutt (Vineet Kumar Singh) and two others, settling down somewhere near Chirala on the AP coast. They establish a kingdom in and around 40 villages of Mottupalli. The siblings, aided by aggressive mom (Swaroopa Gosh), unleash a reign of terror that could make Adolf Hitler look like a boy scout.
The film-maker does not mince words. He calls a spade a shovel and uses both aptly. Our contemporary cinema is about one-upmanship among greatly competent and skill-filled filmmakers. The story strongly is about how immigrants and gangs control the polity and exploit them in a manner that could teach North Korea’s Kim Jong-un a lesson or two. Ranatunga is joined by his wife Bharti (Regina Cassandra) who doesn’t blink an eyelid even to have women police personnel headed by SI Ujjayalakshmi (Saiyami Kher) stripped and sealed and even raped!
With not a minute to breathe or reason, Gopichand belongs to the school that conviction is far more pivotal than logic. Minor details like reasoning, proportionality, grace do not hamper him. He thrives in challenging them. Things go awry when a stranger arrives in the village. A stunt encounter between the stranger who is a mutation of Lal Bahadur Shastri’s ‘Jai Jawan Jai Kisan’ fights the leader of lurking baddies: Rama Subba Reddy (Ajay Ghosh), Somdutt and Ranatunga. The entire village population is repeatedly attacked gruesomely, and you have consistent graphic detailing with unparalleled commitment to his cause.
The stranger declares himself a Jaat, and thus is a physical combination of Balakrishna, Rajni Sir, Ravi Teja and the stated species. He announces that North India is aware of his ‘dhai kilo ka haath’ and that he is on a patriotic pilgrimage to the South. Since the messenger and the maker are in perfect sync, it is inevitable that it is going to be a field day for the masses. That tells it all.
Sunny Deol is Jaat. That is stating the obvious – like everything else. The film is a stand-alone, hear-aloud declamation on patriotic muscle and survival of the virtuous fittest. That could apply to the audience too.
The song in the backdrop, ‘Bhaage re bhaage dushman’ has a profound message – the equal object, notwithstanding.
