Mar 17, 2016 09:24 PM
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For, this saga is not of the redemption of one person, but the emancipation of entire peoples.
The clarion call of the collective conscience of an oppressed society rouses it sufficiently to wreak restorative vengeance on a cooperative of corrupt politicians, police and land mafia: humanity is purged of its sins as if by ablutions in the holy water of the Ganges(Gangaajal.)
Quantico PC, fresh-faced and cheesy from her recent outings on the Oscars, other than having sex with the offenders, violates them in every possible way. With her manicured fingers, slender wrists, and pointy knees, like an unearthly apparition she comes charging out of the clump of trees in the far distance: what ho, what mad eyes rolling, what crusted tongue dangling inches above the dewy grass, what vaporous jetstream of drool trailing its heaving sides, what crooked tail propelling it crazily in figure-eights across the dizzy roundabouts – like what hounded cur is the thug dispatched by her to the unfathomed deeps! Newly anointed as the first kickass woman SP of Bankipur of Bihar, she finds herself up against a coven of a deeply corrupted entity: Hell is empty and all the devils are here. Call it a fairy tale, an urban legend of an upright cop cleaning up the system.
Babloo Pandey, the local MLA, in cohorts with his pudgy brother Dabloo Pandey, and DSP Bhola Nath Singh, aka B N Singh(Director Prakash Jha himself in a debut role) will ruthlessly expunge all resistance to his land grabbing schemes. Enter PC, who bungs a spanner into the works, and begins to call the shots. Soon, she injects the much-needed Kevlar into the gelatin backbones of an impotent police force and civil society, who storm the Bastille under her tacit encouragement. Her stinging words and stern eyes cast a spell; and struck by a sudden panic attack of conscience, all the rogues are transformed into scrupled rebels who rally behind her for the unleashing of Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité.
The movie operates on a very gritty and visceral level, sourcing inspiration from real life incidents as they unfold daily in our rabid news channels – which are more spicy and roguish than any most offending movie. In India, none of what’s there in “Jai Gangaajal” is either novel or surprising: raped Dalit girls hanging from trees in a dusty wasteland, farmers breast-beating over land grabbing, highhandedness of the political-police-criminal nexus – the modern aristocracy of our country, girls being shanghaied and violated in moving vehicles, these are just the…whatchamacallit…the stuff news is made of on any given sunny day: and the plot is just that – a patchwork of gritty scenes lifted from our daily life events.
Manav Kaul as Dabloo Pandey, the local MLA, is a treat – his understated, suffering, raving mien draws fair comparison to Joaquin Phoenix, the tormented, sleep-deprived, incestuous emperor of “Gladiator.”
The pleasant surprise of the movie is the debut acting of Prakash Jha – as a reformed rogue police officer he is a natural in front of as well as behind the camera. Another welcome wonder is the epiphany of the police – here they arrive on the scene in time, as if they had mutated Precogs reading off Minority Reports. A last enigma is the Madhya Pradesh number plates on vehicles in a land supposed to be in faraway Bihar – all this lends a very Steven Spielberg-ish, noir, whodunit, Wild West, and science fiction sheen to the movie.
With nearly Rupees 20 Crores box office collections on the opening weekend, the movie has opened to lukewarm audience response and critic reviews. “After all, ” they ask, “what’s new; switch on the news and it’s all there anyways.” But it makes a far better watch than all the stale romances and inane diversions on display on the weekend multiplexes out there.
The End.
