Put medu vada into sarson ka saag—will it taste as good as with sambar-chutney or, alternatively, makke ki roti? Those experiments may have debatable results as per perceptions of taste! But place Sunny Deol (that too as a verified Jaat) in Andhra Pradesh and the mix is—delectable indeed!
Sunny Deol a.k.a. Baldev Pratap Singh, on a trip to South India, in a North-bound train headed for Ayodhya. The train gets an unscheduled stop in a remote place due to a mishap ahead, and Baldev, who terms himself as yeh Jaat (this Jaat) hops across to a nearby hut for a dal-roti meal. The lady apologetically tells him that she can instead offer idli that is steaming hot and he accepts it. A bunch of goons in cars come in and one nudges him, causing the idlis and sambar to fall on the floor. He requests him for an apology and is mocked. Jaat beats him and his friends to a pulp.
When they mention that their leader is Rama Subba Reddy, he takes them there and repeats his story and demand for apology. Reddy laughs, is beaten to a pulp at a ceremony in his home, and tells him that he will have to deal with Romulu, who is like a brother. Jaat takes them all to Romulu (Vineet Kumar Singh), who is indulging in nefarious activities in a government office on a Sunday!
The demand is repeated and the end result is that Romulu and his cohorts also face the same fate. Romulu finally tells him that he cannot escape his brother, Ranatunga (Randeep Hooda) and Jaat takes them all there! Ranatunga apologizes and the Jaat prepares to leave, seemingly happy at last, but he notices a few suspicious things, returns from the door and asks for explanations.
And thereby hangs the core tale of Jaat. Ranatunga is a poor laborer in Sri Lanka who discovers a cache of hidden gold and decamps with it (during the Jaffna imbroglio) with his three men and is arrested after they land on Indian shores in a boat and bury the booty. Bribing the cops, they acquire Indian identities.
The ruthless Ranatunga coterie stops at nothing, and he finally has an empire of sorts centered in Motapelli in Andhra, and his mother (Swaroopa Ghosh) and wife (Regina Cassandra) too are hand-in-glove with him. As the corpses pile up (most placed under the ground) and 40 terrified villages cow down to him, a child in one of the villages writes a letter to the president (Ramya Krishnan) that is received alongside a couriered parcel with severed thumbs. She orders the honest CBI officer Satyamurthy (Jagapathi Babu) to go to the area and find out facts.
Meanwhile, Jatt makes an enemy out of Ranatunga and gang, and helping him is a determined yet scared and victimized group of six valiant women officers led by Vijaya Lakshmi (Saiyami Kher), who were earlier terrorized and stripped by Ranatunga’s wife and kept in their home!
We will not need astrological powers, the gift of premonition or a high IQ to know where all this will end, and while the conclusion can thus be foretold, it is what happens en route, all along, that makes Jaat a paisa-vasool (value for money) entertaining watch.
The flipside (apart from the inevitable lack of quality in S. Thaman’s songs) is that we finally get a secret identity to the Jaat as well as Ranatunga, which I think was not needed, even if the first was in a way logical. There are some needless items like an ‘item’ song and a cop’s death scene that are also not really relevant.
Plus, there are gruesome scenes galore, and they could have been curtailed in view of susceptible audience sensibilities, even if the narration needed a few such moments to enhance the impact of Ranatunga and his doings.
However, these blips on Jaat’s radar are compensated by several innovative highs. The entire idlisaga is a long delight and provides much-needed light moments. What Ranatunga’s wife does to the women officers, the pre-climactic action in the police station, the first discovery of the headless bodies and the way the bloodied parcel arrives at the President’s office are all riveting high points.
While the action coordinators (one interestingly being a duo named Ram-Laxman, a name very familiar to Marathi and Hindi film music lovers!!) and the film’s director deserve encomiums, and so do the film editor (Navin Nooli) and DOP (Rishi Punjabi). S. Thaman’s BGM is hardly noticed, which is how BGM should be.
Sunny Deol as Jaat is simply incredible. At 67, he looks like someone in his early 50s and as it is a whopping 42 years since his debut in Betaab, I cannot marvel enough at his persona that looks like a superman that he is shown as. Randeep Hooda (forgive me, Randeep!) scores much better than he was in his own film on Savarkar, and that’s saying a lot. Vineet Kumar Singh is totally in-sync as the vicious Somulu and is the third powerful angle here, though he plays second fiddle to his brother.
Saiyami Kher makes a solid mark as Vijayalakshmi and her five associates too make a mark. Babloo Prithiveeraj, Makarand Deshpande and Upendra Limaye are excellent in their smaller roles and the surprise is Regina Cassandra as Ranatunga’s wife.
This is an actioner that is worth the while of every action buff, not just for Sunny Deol fans. A lot of the action seems implausible, but when was that a minus point in both Hollywood and Indian cinema?
Rating: ***1/2
Mythri Movie Makers’, Zee Studios’ & People Media Factory’s Jaat Produced by: Umesh Kumar Bansal, Naveen Yerneni, TG Vishwa Prasad & Ravishankar Yalamanchili Directed by: Gopichand Malineni Written by: Gopichand Malineni, Srinivas Gavireddy, Kundan Pandey, Sai Madhav Burra & Saurabh Gupta Music: S. Thaman Starring: Sunny Deol, Randeep Hooda, Saiyami Kher, Regina Cassandra, Ramya Krishnan, Vineet Kumar Singh, Ajay Ghosh, Jagapathi Babu, Swaroopa Ghosh, Mushtaq Khan, Babloo Prithveeraj, Zarina Wahab, Makarand Deshpande, Swaroopa Ghosh, Upendra Limaye, Ajay Ghosh, Vinay Varma, Nithin Mehta, Murali Sharma, Moumita Pal, Ayesha Khan, Divi Vadthya, Bandhavi Sridhar, Vishika Kota, Praneeta Patnaik and others Sp. App.: Urvashi Rautela
(Used with permission from NIT)
