Jigra Review

There's a scene in Jigra that perfectly captures Vasan Bala's sharp narrative style. Satya (Alia Bhatt), seething with anger, sits in a chartered plane en route to Hanshi Dao, a fictional communist country where her beloved brother Ankur (Vedang Raina) faces a death sentence for drug possession. In a snarky act of defiance, she orders everything from the in-flight menu - literally everything - and devours it all while watching one of Amitabh Bachchan's iconic "angry young man" films.

Two key details make the scene darkly humorous. First, the plane belongs to Mr. Mehtani, the wealthy uncle who took Satya and Ankur in after their parents died. They didn't just live with him, though - Satya now works as the family's house manager. Second, Satya is furious because it was Mr. Mehtani's son's false testimony that got Ankur sentenced.

This moment pulls together several complex themes that unfold satisfyingly in the first act: Satya's uneasy relationship with her rich relatives, the classic trope of the poor being scapegoated for the rich, and the harsh laws of a foreign country. Satya is about to embark on an epic journey to save her brother, but for now, her only way to cope is to stuff herself with sushi and curry.

"Everything", though, also seems to have been the keyword guiding director-writer Vasan Bala's overall narrative. The story weaves and twists searching for the right instrument to carry its theme of the Unbreakable Sibling Bond. Satya will do literally anything - blow up a high-security prison in a foreign country, cut her wrist, kill a man - all of which she does, or suggests doing, as she searches for a way to bring Ankur home. First, though, she tries the justice system until she realises it is a dead-end. And with that the possibility of the film turning into a procedural courtroom drama (of the kind in Matt Damon's Stillwater) ends, and it shifts gears to a prison break story. Blueprints get unrolled and plots are hatched when Muthu and Bhatia enter the fray - their people on the death row too. Fortunately Bhatia is a retired gangster, and Muthu, an Indian-origin ex-cop wants to jailbreak a prisoner that he put on the death row who has since been proven innocent.

Yet, by the third act the dusty old rulebook of mainstream Bollywood cinema is back in play. Style and tone are sacrificed for sentimentality and the Big Finish. And the film which sets expectations of a slick, energetic jailbreak turns into an unhinged melodramatic spectacle with an unending string of chase sequences and slow-mo emotional codas. Out of the blue, Satya rappels up a prison wall - it is an oddly-placed Mission Impossible scene unfolding inside a prison break plot the kind that DC's Joker may have come up with. "Tenu Sang Rakhna", a song that is so moving the first time it plays when Satya and Ankur meet after the Ankur's arrest, a sibling anthem of sorts, is rendered powerless from overuse.

Jigra, despite tantalizingly touching on big ideas that are literally country-scale - barbaric justice systems and the rich-poor divide - still routes itself back to the safety of heroism and of its one big idea - a woman who will go scorched-earth to save her brother. One might say that it matters that the "hero" in this case is a woman protecting her brother, not the usual leading man saving his helpless sister. Gender-swapped though it may be, Jigra's narrative devolves into formula, and abandons all intellectualism for old-school heroism.

In the end, the energy of the film is sustained by some stellar performances and a few tricks of the screenplay trade, the favorite being one, shall we call, "subverted expectations". Subverted Expectation #1: Instead of one, there are two prison break plans at play, and neither conspiring team is aware of the other's plan. Subverted Expectation #2: The prison's sadistic warden, Landa, is an unexpectedly dark villain (played by Vivek Gomber doing a rather forced Asian accent). Being a man of Indian origin, Ankur desperately tries to appeal to him. But Bala subverts both Ankur's and audiences' expectations of the sympathetic inside-man trope through Landa's merciless character who fancies himself a extremist Hanshi Dao patriot, and gets more and more psychopathic until he ends up a caricature.

Muthu, played by Rahul Ravindran, turns out to be one of the film's more interesting characters. There are a couple of face-off scenes between Satya and Muthu which, had they been executed in good faith, may have given the story some depth, but these scenes are just more ways to tell us what we already know: Satya will do anything and everything for her brother. (I must say, though, that Satya's actions are far closer to what Ranvijay Singh's should have been in Animal as a man ready to "burn the whole world" for his papa).

Despite the last-minute narrative timidity of Jigra, its energy is undeniable. Watching Satya power through on painkillers after being literally thrown off a cliff is a dark thrill. And few actors are more arresting (pardon the pun) than Alia Bhatt in a bad-ass-bitch avatar. Satya feels like the soul-sister of the foul-mouthed hijab-wearing girl she plays in Gully Boy. She brings an inflammable intensity to Satya that even the brawniest of heroes sometimes cannot match. One wouldn't want to dare mess with Satya. When she says rather calmly to her brother that he WILL get out of jail and they WILL go home, even though no one has ever been released from a death sentence in Hanshi Dao, you just believe her.

Vedang Raina, who plays Ankur, broken and battered in prison, threading the line between shock and faith (in his sister), firmly establishes himself as a rising star in the industry.

Jigra's impeccable production quality from the prison sets to Hanshi Dao's streets (modeled after Singapore, no doubt) gives the film a much-needed air of realism, even though some of the rules of the country's prison seem arbitrary (why construct a fully-automated prison on an island that is prone to power cuts?). The standout element of the movie, though, is its gloriously fresh background score. From needle drops of old Bollywood songs (Mr. Bhatia likes his 80s Bachchan-saab music) to contemporary rap, Achint Thakkar's score is one of this year's finest.

The overextended final act with its manufactured melodrama may disappoint some viewers. But Jigra has so much going for it, most of all the undeniably manic energy pulsating from its livewire of a lead character, that you simply can't be bored. In fact, you may wish Satya was your sister, standing between you and this big, bad world.