Jigra Review: Alia Bhatt, Vedang Raina Are Gutsy Siblings in Dusty Script
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
“Maa ko bhagwaan le gaye. Papa ne khud ki jaan le li. Dur ke rishtedaaro ne panah di, par bhaari kiraaya vasool kiya…”
Jigra opens with a contrived, mildly comical scene of a sibling duo walking home from school, with the older sister asking her brother to give up the names of his bullies so that she can beat them to a pulp. Then, within seconds, the scene takes a “WTF” U-turn as the kids open the door to see their father jump off the balcony.
Directed by Vasan Bala (Monica, O My Darling / Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota / Ray), Jigra immediately establishes lead protagonist Satya (Alia Bhatt) as a fiercely protective sister to younger brother Ankur (Vedang Raina). When Ankur is arrested in a foreign country on false charges of selling/consuming narcotics, Satya teams up with a gangster named Bhatia (Manoj Pahwa) and former cop Muthu (Rahul Ravindran) to break Ankur out of prison, along with three other inmates.
One of the first script problems is how Ankur is initially portrayed as a smart young man, making it borderline ridiculous that he voluntarily takes the blame for a serious crime. This happens because his lawyer convinces him to take the fall for a wealthier cousin caught with drugs, promising him false assurances of a quick bail. Do viewers want to root for someone who lacks basic self-preservation instincts? I’m not so sure. Even though Ankur’s character does undergo major transformation due to harsh prison conditions, building in him a new fight for life. Meanwhile, the wealthy relatives who pushed Ankur under the bus to save their own son, are pretty much forgotten in the second-half of the tale.
As Divya Khosla Kumar claimed, Jigra indeed is quite similar to the Bollywood film Savi, which itself was a remake of the 2008 French thriller Anything for Her. For those who’ve already seen Savi, this Alia Bhatt starrer doesn’t bring much new to the table, except for minor tweaks. In Savi, a housewife does everything she can to free her husband from a British prison, after he is falsely convicted for murder. Similarly, in Jigra, Vedang Raina’s Ankur is imprisoned in a fictional foreign country called Hanshi Dao, and his sister Satya is willing to go to any length to rescue him. Interestingly, Mahesh Bhatt’s 1993 film Gumrah too shares similarities with Jigra, it featured Sridevi as a singer facing the death penalty in Hong Kong for drug possession. And much like Savi, the Sridevi movie was loosely based on the 1989 series Bangkok Hilton starring Nicole Kidman.
Yes, both Alia Bhatt and Vedang Raina deliver convincing performances, but the story lacks the intrigue needed for viewers who prefer fast-paced thrillers with punchy twists. Alia gets to play an “angry young woman,” a character with the same kind of build-up and attention typically reserved for big action heroes in commercial cinema. By the time the credits roll, you’ll realize Jigra tries to be a serious crime drama but lands somewhere between uninspired melodrama and a draggy action flick. If you have the “jigra” (guts) to sit through it, all the power to you! I guess, I had much higher expectations from this film.
Rating: 2 on 5. Jigra is available on Netflix.
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