Jawan Extended Cut Review
Whoa, I wasn’t prepared for the violent opening scenes of the 2023 movie ‘Jawan,’ which, by the way, is an excellent way to hook action fans – get the wham, bam, bloodbath right at the beginning. So the Shah Rukh Khan film starts off with a bang, where his character saves a village from being plundered by a gang of ruthless murderers. Soon, the mood shifts, and viewers are taken 30 years into the future, where Shah Rukh Khan and a group of six women hijack a metro train and demand a ridiculous amount of money in exchange for the freedom of their hostages. They want the money for debt-ridden farmers who’ve been crushed by cruel interest rates and loan sharks.
Directed by Atlee, who co-wrote the script with Sumit Arora and Ramanagirivasan, ‘Jawan’ is a Shah Rukh Khan showcase where the superstar plays a sophisticated Robin Hood of sorts called Vikram Rathore, who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. Vikram works with a band of six kick-ass women, and actors Priya Mani Raj, Sanya Malhotra, Girja Oak, Sanjeeta Bhattacharya, Lehar Khan, and Aaliyah Qureishi form his onscreen core team. Nayanthara plays the plucky Narmada, the officer in charge of investigating Vikram Rathore’s daring theatrical acts, which capture the entire nation’s imagination and make him the direct enemy of businessman Kalee Gaikwad (Vijay Sethupathi). Flashbacks reveal that Vikram’s enmity with Kalee goes way back in time and is deeply personal, even though his revenge is carried out on a massive public scale.
With a runtime of almost three hours, “Jawan” unfolds like a flashy mass-entertainer, complete with song-dance, a dash of romance and a larger than life villain. While some of the songs could’ve been skipped to make the runtime more crisp, the breezy love-track “Chaleya” featuring the hypnotic voice of Arijit Singh and Shilpa R is a foot-tapping hit that serves as a great break between the angst, blood, and tears. The plot is ridiculously unreal – within a span of a few days, Vikram Rathore is able to ‘fix’ a staggering number of national problems. He and his squad financially aids hundreds of thousands of farmers, forces the government to overhaul the medical system, and shut down toxic factories polluting the nation. The medical sub-plot is very reminiscent of Atlee’s 2017 hit “Mersal”, which also dealt with the themes of medical malpractices and corruption in the health system.
Shah Rukh Khan is unquestionably the center of the universe in ‘Jawan,’ with the rest of the cast akin to little stars orbiting around him. Atlee and the team have crafted a script that not only allows SRK to shine as a gritty action hero/messiah of the poor, but also showcases his soft charm as the quintessential romantic hero he is known to be. From a god-like savior of a village, a renegade hijacker with a penchant for lame jokes, to a dignified swashbuckling decorated special forces officer, Shah Rukh Khan adopts many personas in “Jawan”. And oh! He also plays a Jailer, which will immediately make fans think of Rajinikanth’s Jailer, but okay, let’s not make comparisons.
Vijay Sethupathi as antagonist Kalee doesn’t match up to the kind of lore Atlee builds around the hero’s character and it’s not the actor’s fault. Kalee is just too one dimensional and suffers from shallow characterization. To compensate for the villain’s lack of personality, there are plenty of well-shot action sequences, violence, and deaths to keep you engaged. There’s a chase sequence in the last half hour, which was totally over-the-top and reminded me of the “Dhoom” films – SRK literally flies on a bike while fighting bad guys, it cannot get more “Dhoom” than that.
“Jawan” is an anti-establishment film, but the plot exists in its own idealistic la-la-land, so it can be best enjoyed when you suspend some sense of reality, sit back, relax, and let the theatrics unfold. As the story heads to its climax, there’s a scene which completely slows down the pace and was too patronizing, with Vikram Singh delivering a sob-lecture to the nation on live television about a person’s moral responsibilities as honest citizens. It felt like a dull school assembly session where the class topper takes the podium to recite an essay on “how you should behave.” But the final confrontation with Kalee takes place after the boring address, so “Jawan” concludes on a triumphant note, where evil is finally punished and there’s poetic justice in the end.
Watch “Jawan” if you are a fan of larger than life action films. It is available to stream on Netflix.
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