When Blockbusters Are Relevant: A Review of JAWAN (☆☆☆ ½)

Bollywood has been reputed as India’s most addictive drug—an escapist fantasy for the masses. Jawan, on its face, may not seem like such a movie. Sure, it has all the ingredients—lavish dance setpieces, bombastic action sequences, and an ever-recognizable, ever-bankable star in Shah Rukh Khan (despite the fact that he is quickly approaching his sixties). But nothing about its premise immediately suggests escapism. Its villain is the corrupt Indian “system”—the one that drives impoverished farmers to suicide, under-resourced public hospitals to crumble, and soldiers with faulty weaponry to fall while greedy politicians and corporates happily line their pockets. Jawan isn’t escaping from the nation’s cruel realities; it calls them out explicitly. Will audiences really warm to something so close to home?

Evidently, they are—Jawan continues to pass milestone after milestone at the box office, carrying the otherwise downward-trending financial returns of the Bollywood market on its back. It’s because the movie is offering a different kind of fantasy to moviegoers: a Tarantino-esque revenge fantasy where those responsible for the mass’s misery are held accountable in cash and blood. In so doing, the film isn’t at all undermining what Bollywood is all about; it’s re-establishing what made the industry great in the first place. Much less than the catchy music and melodramatic romances, the greatest Hindi films were always grounded by a moral core—often one that was socially relevant. One might think back to examples like the hits of Raj Kapoor, who used commercial filmmaking to promote his vision of a more economically equitable India. Even actors with less overtly political agendas frequently dipped their toes into lighthearted films with an underlying commentary on Indian society (Amar Akbar Antony, which used the star trio of Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, and Vinod Khanna to promote religious harmony, comes to mind). Like much of our global pop culture, recent Bollywood entries have largely discarded that social messaging in favor of solely the fluff. Jawan returns to combining both, mixing masala with message to craft a highly entertaining blockbuster.

The fact that the movie makes the old feel new is encapsulated in its unfailingly charismatic hero, SRK. Here he takes on a dual role as Azad, the Robin Hood protagonist, and his father Vikram Rathore, a highly skilled army veteran betrayed by his nation. Past and present literally shake hands in the form of these two characters who redistribute wealth from wealthy corporate boss Kalee Gaikwad and his political lackeys, ultimately exacting vengeance on them. The filmmaking here is extremely satisfying: though the detailed slow-motion fight sequences might seem excessive to some, they are executed to over-the-top perfection. The camera work is energetic and creative, the sound mixing gets the heart racing, and the editing is top-notch. These elements are often found to be lacking in Bollywood as the Hindi film industry continues to get lazier and lazier, losing ground to South Indian cinema in terms of production quality. Jawan manages to capture the best of all worlds by handing over the reins to a South Indian director who makes this feel like a modern blockbuster—one that can hold a candle to recent hits from the South like RRR.

It’s important to note that this type of film needn’t be “deep” or “subtle” in order to work. It’s not just the technical aspects of Jawan that are over dramatic, but the dialogue is decidedly unsubtle as well. The corruption of the antagonists, the hardships of the protagonists—all of it is presented in an incredibly simplified manner that makes the complex layers of Indian politics appear to be a mere question of good versus evil. And maybe we actually need more of that in our discourse! Waving away farm debt and childhood mortality as “complex issues” that need years to be resolved is the kind of defeatist mindset that plagues not only India but all nations around the world where the populace is disillusioned or apathetic about their governments. In a world where it takes decades to implement beneficial economic policies and effective medical systems, maybe it inspires hope to watch a film where all of it is possible in a matter of mere hours—so long as a few violent, indignant heroes are holding a literal gun to the face of the system.

This is the kind of movie that audiences all over the world have recently been flocking to, but don’t often get from the studios. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie was the undeniable smash hit of the year, earning high praise for its over-the-top production style with subversive feminist themes. No, we aren’t Barbie girls living in a Barbie world with eye-popping pink landscapes and Mojo Dojo Casa Houses for our patriarchy to fester within. But the simpler, analogous setting helps us think about our own world with more clarity, while still having lots of fun in store for cinemagoers. Like Barbie, the humor in Jawan lands quite organically. SRK is refreshingly self-aware for an aging film star; “Chahiye toh Alia Bhatt,” his character comments cheekily—but he concludes that Bollywood’s current leading actress would be too young for him (but funnily enough, this doesn’t stop Deepika Padukone from making a guest appearance).

The movie, like most movies, is not perfect. There are a few too many explosive slo-mo action scenes, and it runs a bit longer than it needs to. The story involves quite a few female characters who are integral to the movie’s action and are not romance devices—but encouraging as this is, they still fall into a Charlie’s Angels-style archetype where a male boss orders around his posse of badass female fighters and, in this case, keeps the lion’s share of the glory for himself. I think that’s a pretty silly, lazy way of incorporating “strong” female characters; they have very little individuality. The boss battle of the movie involves Shah Rukh Khan using a literal hive mind of “his women” from a female jail against the government negotiator’s men. I think this was the only portion in the film where I cringed slightly, in addition to the revelation of a minor Russian character who suspiciously resembles the Batman villain Bane and owns a pet cheetah on a chain (he ultimately has no relevance to the plot). But maybe I am now expecting too much from a blockbuster. These are just quibbles; none of these issues are fatal. 

Above all else, I appreciate Shah Rukh Khan for taking a risk in making this movie. It pulls very few punches in calling out the rotten political core that still plagues India in the form of the sitting BJP government; in a pivotal moment of the film, Azad speaks directly into the camera to implore the fictional audience (and the audience of the real world) to “question their government” and vote accordingly. Considering that a general election is coming up in India next year, along with the fact that films released in India have to deal with an increasingly political censorship board, and remembering that his son was very recently harassed by the current government due to the star’s politics, I think it was a brave move for SRK to make a loud statement about the nation’s state of affairs in no uncertain terms.

We like to go to blockbusters to turn off our brains and have fun. But, if you switch it on for any part of Jawan, do it during that pivotal monologue of Azad’s. Revenge fantasies are great. Political change is better.