Review of Jazbaa (2015) by Dhruv Krishna G — 11 Oct 2015

Bollywood tends to come out with two types of thrillers - the first types are the rare ones, which are strikingly original and magnificently crafted ('A Wednesday', 'Special 26', 'Omkara') and the second types are the more routine ones, which are imminently forgettable and seem ridiculously unnecessary and dumb ('Ek Villain', 'Agent Vinod', 'Phantom' to name a few). Jazbaa, without any doubt, belongs to the second category.

Jazbaa is an official remake of the 2008 Korean movie 'Seven Days' and the plot of the movie revolves around a prominent lawyer, Anuradha Verma (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) who has never lost a case in her life. Her life, however, turns upside down when her daughter is kidnapped and as ransom, the kidnappers tell her to protect a convicted felon. With the help of her police officer friend Yohaan (Irrfan Khan), Anuradha Verma attempts to protect the felon as well as learn more about the kidnapper.

Jazbaa is not an entirely unwatchable film and this is probably the biggest compliment I can give to this movie. It is not a movie I will hate on but it is also one of those movies I would never see again. The biggest reason this film is not entirely unwatchable is because, to a large extent, this movie moves at a very good pace. The pace kept me engaged for a decent amount of the movies runtime and even though it kind of reduced the emotional impact of the movie, it maintained the kind of 'race against time' aspect alive.

The other, more obvious reason, this movie works is because of 'Irrfan Khan'. I firstly wondered as to what an actor of his caliber was doing in this movie and I really thought that he is going to be utterly wasted in the role he was given. But he is an actor who manages to make even unrealistic and underwritten characters somewhat interesting. 'Irrfan' manages to pull off even the most terrible dialogues with utmost conviction and certainly made me laugh in one or two scenes with his comic timing. He gets one of the weakest characters of the movies but still manages to make him interesting.

These two positives aside, Jazbaa, ends up being just like the routine thrillers that offer nothing new in terms of story or characters. The story of the movie begins off as being decent but descents into being ridiculous and unnecessarily dumb. The overall message of the movie, especially, is so far-fetched and implausible, that I just thought to myself as to how anyone could come up with such a stupid idea in real life. By the end, I really felt, the director had decided to throw all of the logic out of the window and just show a story that would appeal more to an Indian public right now because the issue the movie attempts to talk about is trending in our country right now.

The other thing that I honestly could not stand in this movie was its treatment of the women characters in this movie. Two of the major three characters are women, and both of them are written so poorly that even high caliber actors cannot save them from being caricatures. 'Shabana Azmi's character is so clichéd and given to mouth such a ridiculous dialogues that her character or acting never engages. And our protagonist suffers mainly from the same problem (except sometimes, she comes as even more annoying). In some of the movies worst scenes, director 'Sanjay Gupta' either tells 'Aishwarya Rai Bachchan' that the louder she shouts, the more of an emotional connect she would make with us or 'Bhachchan' just decides to overdo the melodrama, the movie just got unbearable. I have never been a fan of 'Aishwarya Rai Bachchan' but I truly think she is a better actress than this and I wish that she chooses to better roles than these cause this performance and character certainly disappointed me.

Overall, I see Jazbaa as another movie to add to this list of forgettable Bollywood thrillers that quite frankly can probably be watched once when aired on television.