Movie: Jai Gangaajal
Director: Prakash Jha
Cast: Priyanka Chopra, Prakash Jha, Manav Kaul
Genre: Action-drama
Prakash Jha has a penchant for creating satires on the socio-political circumstances of the country. His movies have a raw, rustic, rugged aura around it that makes it impossible to not pay heed to it. His latest flick, Jai Gangaajal has Priyanka Chopra in the lead and deals with a regressive law and order situation of a town in U.P. Here is the storyline:
Abha Kapoor (Priyanka Chopra) has been transferred to a town called Bankeypur. The circle inspector in the town B.N. Singh (Prakash Jha) is suave and diplomatic police officer. He works for the corrupt local MLA Babloo Pandey (Manav Kaul) and plays a big hand in sustaining the crime in the city, only his tracks are too smooth to be uncovered. Will Abha stand a chance of survival in a city overrun by goons and chaos?
Prakash Jha deserves applause for choosing a female lead who kicks ass like a boss. There is a scene in the movie where Priyanka Chopra beats the life out of a gang of goons who are harassing a girl while the rest of crowd watches hands tied. We have grown so sensitized to watching our heroes bash up villains that watching PC in action mode gave me goose bumps and had the entire hall cheering for her. Priyanka’s training in in Marykom has clearly paid off in this movie. However, her dialogue delivery lacked power in certain scenes. She delivered the right punches in the action scenes yet her dialogue delivery lacked the same. Prakash has proved his acting prowess as B.N. Singh. He fit into the shoes of the character and let the script mould him as and when required. The supporting cast of Manav Kaul, Murli Sharma, Rahul Bhatt, etc. portrayed significant roles and breathed life into the otherwise redundant script.
The storyline is Gangs of Wasseypur plus Singham plus Dabang and several such stories rolled into one with a slight twist, the goon bashing hero is a woman. The storyline is predictable as we have seen the same and more play over and over again in the halls. The first half of the movie still has an interesting buildup however, the second half plummets down badly and the movie stretches on for endless two hr forty-five minutes. The songs which keep playing as the background score, have very interesting lyrics written by Salim-Sulaiman. The editing of the movie is also questionable. In the first half there were some scenes which appeared unconnected to the past scenes or even the coming up scenes. It was confusing as I kept feeling that a part of the story had been cut out and the rest glued together.
It’s a decent one time watch especially if you enjoy some girl-power.
My verdict: **
