Jawan Review

To understand why a film like Jawan got made, you have to pay attention to what Shah Rukh Khan confesses to the camera in the 2023 Netflix documentary The Romantics. Playfully, he frets about his career as the Lover Boy of Indian cinema. Back when he started, he reveals, he actually aspired to be an action hero, but the overwhelming success of DDLJ destined him to a lifetime of romance and drama. All anybody ever wanted him to be was Raj or Rahul. And so he serenaded audiences for 30 years before taking a hiatus. No doubt he rid his closet of fuzzy cashmere sweaters during that break. Because this year - the year of his big comeback - he seems determined to rekindle his original dream and be reborn as a man of action. Pathaan saw him (or rather, his stunt double) dangle from helicopters and zip around on snowmobiles while fighting terrorists. With Jawan, his transformation is more urgent and reckless.

Jawan pulls its soul from the "angry young man" genre of movies where a vigilante type tries to take down the corrupt establishment and "fix the system" overnight. Shah Rukh Khan plays Azad, the redeemer, the big guy who stands up for the small guy. With the help of a ragtag group of young women with uncool codenames (Hacker, Artist, Darling, Doctor...), Azad orchestrates a series of highly-publicized kidnappings. His first act of rebellion is to hijack a metro train full of people to demand thousands of crores from the government, which he then urgently distributes to every farmer to clear their tractor loans. All of this, done in a cool five minutes. But not before he delivers a hurried speech to the captives held at gunpoint (as if they care), about "the interest rate on a luxury car loan being 8% and for a tractor, 13%".

Azad is quick to put us at ease that he is a gregarious sort of rebel. He wouldn't harm a mosquito without cause. He is the type of break into a jaunty little dance mid-hijack. And he certainly wouldn't kill anyone. Even the negotiating officer, Narmada (Nayanthara), brought in to control or capture him can see he is totally loveable. He is more like Mahesh Babu in Maharshi (2019) rather than Mahesh Babu in Nijam (2003) when it comes to his social justice philosophy.

While "mass" cinema does away with logic or heart, Jawan is especially flippant on both counts. The writing is totally unserious to the point of ridicule. It grapples with big issues but shows total apathy towards them. Solving farmer suicides? Easy. Fixing healthcare for 1.3 billion people? A five-hour job. Rooting out black money? Just give it a day or two. In a montage of happy farmers, a man readies his noose, but quickly drops it to the floor and cheers when he hears that his loan has been cleared - it is a moment as "masala" as it is shockingly tone-deaf. I do wonder what real farmers think when they see their problems are paraded out for the sole purpose of propping up the hero as a messiah who has come to lift them out of poverty.

If the expectation from Jawan is that it churns out a "mass moment" every ten minutes regardless of context, then director-writer Atlee delivers big on that count. He is a man in a great hurry. Jawan's story zooms ahead at lighting speed. Before you can chew down a mouthful of popcorn, a brief courtship has already ended in a marriage. Or yet another complicated national issue has been swiftly resolved. A flashback cameo with an effervescent Deepika Padukone is but a brief moment of respite from the nauseating speed of the screenplay.

Entry scenes abound - although you can't expect much originality in them. The fights and flairs - we've seen all these before. Only they now boast better lighting, smoother graphics, and a superstar who is game to play.

Shah Rukh wholeheartedly embraces the "South Indian" style of commercial cinema. He vaults from an entry scene to a joke to a flashback to a fight without missing a beat. He delivers a rousing "sattar-minute" type of monologue about being an ideal citizen, that plays to the crowds. Nayantara is as pleasing to watch as you might imagine although she looks much more comfortable power-walking down a corridor than swaying her skirts around a fog machine. Vijay Sethupathi, who plays a shady businessman that represents all that is wrong with the system, is a strangely muted villain. He looks as though he has been drugged and dragged onto set and made to mouth Hindi dialog - which he does self-consciously, almost reluctantly.

Jawan often feels like a frustrating marriage between the Bollywood superstar and his Tamil director. The result is soulless commercial entertainment with a hint of vintage SRK trying to poke through. The story gave me deja vu given how thematically similar it is to the 2022 Satyadev film Godse. Although Godse was a more savage, more heartfelt version of Azad.

Whether it was the recycled story, the total disregard for its themes, the so-so music, or the charmless villain, Jawan just didn't work for me. It does, however, feel like it might at the BO.