Shah Rukh Khan is the whole show in Jawan, his second blockbuster adventure in less than a year. Despite a strong supporting cast, Khan dominates the film, performing the kind of over-the-top heroics that have made him a box-office favorite.
Absent from the screen since 2018, Khan made a riveting appearance in 2022’s otherwise so-so Brahmastra Part One: Shiva, then thrilled his fans in January with Pathaan. Jawan is more of what his base likes: a fearless, swaggering character; gross injustices to be avenged; melodramatic flashbacks; big production numbers.
It’s narrative is all over the place, rehashing scenes, subplots, and story lines from easily recognizable movies like The Matrix and Fast and Furious. If anything, Jawan has too much plot. A subway hijacking, a corrupt arms dealer, amnesia, girls with guns, farmer suicides, a single mom with a matchmaking daughter, another mom briefly saved from hanging because she is pregnant, military raids, highway chases, and more.
Jawan leaps backwards and forwards in time, often for no real purpose. The three screenwriters, including director Atlee, manage to pull everything together by the end, but the ride is a lot rockier than it has to be. The musical numbers feel more like interruptions than integral to the plot. While the action scenes are fun, they, like Khan’s dancing, are indifferently executed.
None of this matters to Khan’s fans, who will buy any preposterous twist. Khan survives being shot five times and falling out of a helicopter, for example. He survives being repeatedly smashed in the face with a heavy chain. He survives two-story falls, truck crashes, and a scene-stealing ten-year-old who interrogates him about marrying her mother.
Atlee has helmed several huge Tamil blockbusters, often with Nayanthara, who plays Khan’s love interest Narmada here. A hostage negotiator with the police, she’s betrayed by bureaucracy and winds up in jail—like most of the characters who try to defeat oily villain Kalee Gaikwad (Vijay Sethupathi).
Superstar Deepika Padukone, who was a memorable foil in Pathaan, doesn’t show up until the second half of the film, where she plays Khan’s wife Aishwarya. She is as arresting and effective as always, so good she threatens to tilt the film out of balance.
It says something about the plot that Khan can marry Nayanthara as well as Padukone. In fact, he plays so many roles in Jawan that viewers might lose track. He’s a prison warden, a bald terrorist, a cigar-smoking soldier shooting machine guns like Schwarzenegger, a tech whiz, a father, son, husband, lover, and conscience of a nation. He is, in effect, the whole show.
Jawan is always entertaining, perhaps working best when it is at its most preposterous. Like a big production number in the women’s prison which lasts from day to night, Khan sporting a half-dozen outfits while sending out seriously mixed signals about criminal justice.
For me, the only honest emotions in Jawan came during a scene where Khan meets ten-year-old Suji (Seeza Saroj Mehta), daughter of his future wife. “I’m looking for a papa,” she tells him in forthright tones. It’s staged with admirable clarity and simplicity. “I need a papa to whack my teacher for me,” she adds, after forcing Khan to admit he dyes his hair. I’d watch a whole movie with those two.
Jawan is currently streaming on Netflix in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu languages.
Credits: Directed by Atlee. Screenplay by Atlee, S. Ramanagirivasan. Dialogues: Sumit Arora. Cinematography: G. K. Vishnu. Edited by Ruben. Music by Anirudh Ravichander. Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Nayanthara, Vijay Sethupathi, Deepika Padukone, Seeza Saroj Mehta.
