Jigra is a theater of the absurd

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I remember Rishi Kapoor fuming and telling me that Abhinav Singh Kashyap had conned him, wife Neetu Singh and son Ranbir Kapoor into making the pathetic Besharam (2013), and we all know how brother Anurag Kashyap had gypped the last-mentioned into the catastrophe that was Bombay Velvet (2015).

Now, someone with similar “cinematic sensibilities”, Vasan Bala, who was also a writer in Bombay Velvet (and also Raman Raghav 2.0, which ranks at the very top among the five worst movies I have ever watched!) and assistant to the latter (and more notorious) Kashyap, has conned the brilliant Alia Bhatt (now Ranbir’s wife!) into acting in and even co-producing this awful fare.

For producer Alia Bhatt, nothing can be a worse follow-up than this misadventure after Darlings, which was a high-quality product indeed. As a wag told me, “Stars can be easily fooled into starring in something in which they are given a ‘meaty’ role. They do not want to see the bigger picture when that happens! We have seen sufficient examples of this, like with Anushka Sharma in NH10 in a long list that began probably with Amitabh Bachchan in Mrityudaata!”

I couldn’t agree more!

As for this “high-quality” role and setup, we have had a score of four this year of female protagonists—minus a hero—doing the impossible for their own cause: the saga began with Savi (the only worthwhile exercise among them all), Ulajh and then The Buckingham Murders. In all four cases, the woman showed extraordinarily gumption in missions abroad, but in this case, logic and sense is shredded completely to pieces by the deviant director.

Take a feisty Satya (Alia Bhatt), who has been a kind of angelic savior to a wimpy brother, Ankur (Vedang Raina) since childhood. They have seen their father just say, “Sorry, kids!” and jump out of the balcony, heedless of the trauma that he would inflict upon his kids. The two are brought up lavishly by foster-parents, the Mehtanis (Akashdeep Sabir and Sheeba), whose son Kabir (Aditya Nanda) is close to Ankur.

An offer that Ankur (and a reluctant Satya) cannot refuse takes Kabir and him to Hanshi Dao, which we are told is a Chinese province. Satya is framed in a drug case where the only legal provision is death (recall Alia’s father Mahesh Bhatt’s Gumrah, that smartly-done 1993 rehash of Bangkok Hilton?). A cunning attorney (Hanshi Dao seems full of Indians, like cops, residents and more!) working for the Mehtanis make sure that Kabir testifies against Ankur and walks free. Ankur is “advised” by the attorney to confess to drug-peddling and says that he will get away with a short sentence. Instead, Ankur gets the capital punishment.

Now it is up to superwoman Satya to get her innocent brother out of a high-security (aren’t they all?) jail where the main tyrant seems to be the Indian-hating Indian Landa (Vivek Gomber). Satya asks her assistant to deposit “two crore” into her account for funds abroad and lands in Hanshi Dao, determined to get bro out from his intended electrocution three months later.

Predictably, the allies she meets are Indians whose sons are on death row though they are innocent too (the cops there look at Indians as soft targets, see?). One is Shekhar Bhatia (Manoj Pahwa) and the other is Muthu (Rahul Ravindran), who has resigned as a cop there. From here, it is the theatre, or rather film, of the absurd, with Vasan Bala trying to be his own (as with mentor AK in Bombay Velvet) version of an entertainer. As with his directorial debut, Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota, he revels in hollow spectacle so far as action is concerned, lack of logic to the extreme, and the word “Absurd” assumes new, much-higher connotations in the phantasmagoria of stupidity that breaks out. Imagine, Satya even looks at cutting off the power supply and back-up of the entire town, and even manages it! Later a coterie of cars break into the jail…and so on!

In the first 15 minutes as well as the last 45 of this abominable waste of resources (Did co-producer and mentor Karan Johar also have a hand in bamboozling Alia or was he too taken for a ride?), we barely can make sense of the numbing sequences that are going on and on, and then we have the very filmi post-climax where Satya is almost killed, or so we are made to think.

So that’s a full one hour gone of the 153 minutes runtime. Not that the mid-93 minutes are gripping either, except for my anticipating a solid unfolding of substantial drama, Darlings-style! But at interval point, therefore, I had strong expectations from the movie. After all, Bala, under the creative stewardship of a genuine master like Sriram Raghavan, had done a decent job of directing Monica O My Darling!

But this film hardly gets into any ‘Darling’ (likable) mode. Yes, Alia Bhatt tries her best to lend depth to her role, but at the end of the day, it is just a uni-dimensional one. Manoj Pahwa and Rahul Ravindran are sincere, and so is Ankur Khanna as fellow convict Rayyan. Vivek Gomber as Landa comes across as competently wicked whenever he is not (which is more often) being the typical film villain. Vedang Raina makes a sharp comedown after The Archies, but we can’t blame the poor guy.

As with its co-release, Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video, liberal use is made of old songs, but nothing makes for substance among the original songs, though Tenu sang rakhna does have a passing haunting effect whenever on.

Skip this one if you don’t want to be left befuddled in totality.

Rating: ** (Just About, with 1.5 stars only for Alia!)

Dharma Productions’ & Eternal Sunshine Productions’ Jigra Produced by: Karan Johar, Apoorva Mehta, Soumen Mishra, Alia Bhatt & Shaheen Bhatt Directed by: Vasan Bala Written by: Vasan Bala & Debashish Irengbam  Music: Achint Thakkar & Manpreet Singh  Starring: Alia Bhatt, Vedang Raina, Manoj Pahwa, Vivek Gomber, Rahul Ravindran, Akashdeep Sabir, Sheeba, Harssh A. Singh, Aditya Nanda, Ankur Khanna & others