A twisted tale

Nonika Singh

Early on in the film comes a dialogue, “Yeh Hollywood nahi hai, Bollywood hai.” Does that say it all? And more importantly is that an excuse for the film’s shortcomings? Yes, for even though Hollywood ishtyle, sorry Korean style, (Jazbaa is a remake of a Korean film Seven Days) we get a thriller where the unique ransom demand is linked to a bloody brutal rape and murder, the heart and soul is essentially of an average Indian potboiler.

So, there is a legal eagle Anuradha Verma (Aishwayra Rai Bachchan), who acts more like a special agent than legal luminary, a suspended cop Yuvaan (Irrfan Khan), who maroos dialogues as befitting a Hindi film hero. By the way the top notch lawyer and out of service cop are friends.  Expectedly, there is suitable peppering of melodrama too. Yuvaan, the friend (call him a besotted lover if you wish) sees his own daughter in Anuradha’s. And woven between their friendship and the bond between a single mother and her daughter is the whodunit angle. 

After a brief maa-beti pyar build up, the daughter goes missing at a school sports meet. To enhance the kidnap mystery there is a conniving politician and his drug addict son, a young victim and her mother (Shabana Azmi) and of course the menacing accused (Chandan Roy Sanyal). 

And, to give the devil Sanjay Gupta, the director, his due till the intermission he has you on the edge of the seat. After all, who would want to kidnap a young kid for a rapist and a murderer to go scot free? Who would want to force a lawyer to fight his case when as it is she has little qualms in taking up cases of the guilty? Aishwarya’s character which mouths lines like, “everyone can be bought” and “the innocent can’t afford my fees” is filled with ambiguity. 

But then, character building we know isn’t Gupta’s forte.  Mounting a racy narrative sure is and he does build a fine tempo to lose it all finally. The final twist in the kidnap/ rape/ murder/ women’s rights et al kahani that even bites into the serious concern of female foeticide doesn’t hold at all. Since it would be unfair (to you, not the director) we can’t reveal the climax. 

Suffice it is to say that though Jazbaa is Aishwarya’s comeback vehicle post motherhood, she isn’t the only hero here. In a film that features Irrfan expectedly he would walk away with kudos. And, he does in a role that is typical yet unusual. Filling in the contours of the part that requires him to flex muscles and emote is this gifted actor who is having quite a blast on the silver screen lately. But hold it, there is another hero or heroine shall we say. Oops, have we let the cat out of the bag and said more than required. Our lips are sealed here on.  How the mystery unravels you will have to check out yourself.  All we can say is despite the surprise factor, the final twist doesn’t quite wash over. The film isn’t a complete washout though and is a decent watch, never mind the glitches and the unpalatable climax. Besides can you miss a film if only to learn that the former Miss World looks almost as ravishing as ever?  That she puts up a fairly assured act despite half-baked writing that requires her to scream more as a mother than argue her case as a top lawyer is yet another reason to overlook the gaps.