Jailer Review

I don't envy a filmmaker that casts a superstar in their project. These demi-gods are capable of keeping a dud afloat, but they come with heavy baggage. The baggage of Nostalgia (a word I seem to have used a lot in my recent reviews - take it as a sign of the times). Superstars cannot be seen as having aged or having aches. They are frozen in time, doomed to always call back to their old tricks, or else their fans will scream and cut off the legs from under the throne they sit on.

At least, this was my impression of the superstar film - a genre I've mostly steered clear of, in favour of original stories with new blood. But Nelson Dilipkumar's Jailer, starring India's biggest superstar Rajinikanth, has softened my stance on these films. Maybe they aren't doomed to be repetitive and unoriginal attempts at capturing past glory. Maybe, with a smart script and an able director, they can harness a superstar's signature style so that it doesn't overpower the other characters or sink the story. Jailer gets the balance right.

Rajinikanth plays Muthuveil Pandian - Muthu - an ex-cop who spends his retirement days as an unassuming family man, helping his precocious six-year-old grandson make Youtube videos. Muthu's son, Arjun (Vasanth Ravi), is a fearless, hard-charging ACP. He hunts down a gang of idol smugglers run by a devilish leader named Varman (Vinayakan). In the opening scene of the film, Vinayakan is seen taunting three of his own men as they dangle from the ceiling of their smuggling lair. One of them has ratted on Varman, but Varman doesn't bother to find out who it is. Animalistic and nutty, his eyes glow amber, and his smile bares a row of grimy teeth as he bashes in a man's head and drops the other two into vats, burning them alive with sulphuric acid. When ACP Arjun begins to sniff out Varman's underlings, Varman kidnaps and kills him. To avenge his son, Muthu steps onto the battlefield.

Muthu is a quietly lethal man - Nelson nails this as the defining trait of Muthu's persona. Muthu is also clever and calculating. He doesn't do the dirty work - or at least we don't see him with so much as a hair out of place. The first time Muthu kills a smuggler (Saravan), he simply walks into his house and emerges with a gunny sack. "Garbage," he calmly tells the cab driver (Yogi Babu) before taking his help in dumping the bag into a river.

Guided by his own intuition, Muthu knows when danger is lurking around the corner - another gorgeous character quirk that underscores the experience and expertise hiding behind Muthu's serene facade. A foreboding chill in the night air tells him that Varman's gang is coming to his house to carry out a massacre. He awakes his wife (Ramya Krishnan) and daughter-in-law (Mirna Menon), and seats them at the dining table to watch the bloodbath.

This is the pre-interval scene. An expertly shot, thrilling showdown, bloody and Tarantino-esque. Yet Muthu doesn't so much as flinch. If he is the "dinosaur" that Varman's men mock him to be, he is a T-rex - the apex predator.

Jailer's second half, however, dilutes the tension by packing in an ensemble of A-listers - Jackie Shroff, Mohanlal, Rajkumar - to play Muthu's cross-country network of strongmen. These cameos are fun, but with such a formidable army on Muthu's side, the battle becomes a bit too easy for him, and not as high-stakes (which I guess is the price we pay to see Mohanlal in the chesty attire of a Mumbai don).

Time is also squandered away with a sub-plot of a love triangle involving a farcical character, Blash Mohan (Sunil). But it is a good excuse to bring in Tamannah for an item number. Tamannah smashes it, but the tangent is silly and unnecessary.

We also see Muthu's backstory, where a de-aged Rajinikanth looks surprisingly convincing and sprightly. It is a fan moment that works because it doesn't overstay its welcome. That, and the graphics are impeccable.

Just as pivotal as a superstar's role in a superstar film is the villain's role. And here, Nelson hits another bull's eye with Vinakayan as Varman. Vinayakan puts on a seductively charming show as the brutish smuggler with a manic edge - a perfect balance to the stoic Muthu. Vinakayan is so captivating that one of the reasons the second half feels dimmer is his reduced screen time.

Jailer is a masterful blend of drama and dark humour wherein neither element is dulled by the other. Director Nelson's real triumph, though, is in harnessing Rajini's starpower without degrading it through overuse. He understands that just one well-timed shot of Thalaivar popping a cigar into his mouth and lighting it up in style will do. And that it will, in fact, leave us clamouring for more.