Release date:
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February 10, 2017
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Director:
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Subhash Kapoor
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Cast:
Language:
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Akshay Kumar,
Annu Kapoor, Saurabh Shukla, Kumud Mishra, Sayani Gupta, Manav Kaul, Rajiv
Gupta, Inaamulhaq, Sunil Kumar Palwal, Ram Gopal Bajaj, V.M. Badola, Vinod
Nagpal, Huma Qureshi
Hindi
|
Director Subhash Kapoor’s Jolly LLB was one of the best Hindi
films of 2013. It was that rare Bollywood venture that journeyed into an Indian
courtroom with realistic storytelling rather than manufactured high-decibel
dialoguebaazi, drawing humour and melodrama from true-to-life situations,
through the medium of some of the industry’s finest actors led by the
inimitable Arshad Warsi.
It goes without saying then that
Kapoor has put his neck on the line with Jolly
LLB 2, resurrecting a successful title and upping the stakes by casting a
superstar as his protagonist. Three questions are crying out to be answered
here: Is Part 2 as good as Part 1? Is Akshay Kumar as good as
Warsi? Even when seen in isolation without the context of its predecessor, is
this a good film? Patience, dear readers, patience!
Kapoor – who is credited with the
story, screenplay, dialogues and direction of Jolly LLB 2 – sets the film in Lucknow where Jagdishwar Mishra
a.k.a. Jolly (Akshay Kumar) works as an assistant to the veteran lawyer Rizvi
(Ram Gopal Bajaj). A tragic incident prompts Jolly to set aside his casual
dishonesty and metamorphose into a formidable legal activist.
The case that has this
transformative effect on him involves a pregnant widow seeking justice for her murdered
husband, police corruption, judicial indifference, Kashmir politics and more.
Individually, these are explosive ingredients. And significant portions of the
film are credible as a result. It fails to come together in its entirety though
because of the inconsistent writing.
Keep in mind that the hero of the
first Jolly LLB was initially ignorant,
often unprepared, lazy and consequently amusing, but he was not a fool. The
Jolly of this new tale is well-intentioned, but the weakness of his arguments,
the glaring lacunae in the evidence he presents in court throughout (even after
he has seemingly matured as a lawyer) and the loopholes in the demands made by
the opposing counsel seem invisible not just to him but to the writer too.
Are polygraph tests admissible in
a court of law? If a lawyer facilitates a prisoner’s escape, would it not
strike him that presenting the escapee as a witness in a case could be
problematic? These are just a couple of the questionable situations the film
presents. There are more, which are dealt with in such a way that it is hard to
figure out whether what guides Jolly’s actions and what prevents him from
effectively citing the law in court is inexperience, ignorance or stupidity.
Making matters worse is Jolly LLB 2’s seeming indecision about
the tone it wishes to strike: realistic or revved up. The many little touches
that made Jolly LLB so enchanting,
especially the detailing in the courtroom procedures and production design, are
also not so evident here. It does not help that the first film’s one blaring
shortcoming is carried forward into this one: songs are needlessly injected
into the proceedings, the worst of them being a tuneless Holi number – Manj
Musik’s Go pagal – that completely
disrupts the mood of the narrative.
The gender equations in Jolly LLB 2 are worth a discussion.
Without raising a clamour about it, the film gives us a hero whose wife (Huma
Qureshi) has not taken his surname – she is Pushpa Pandey, not Pushpa Mishra.
Without appearing overly self-conscious or comedifying the situation to soften
the blow for viewers who may be disconcerted, it also shows him cooking for her
and their child. And when her husband is assaulted, she – in a reminder of Rani
from Queen – gives the attacker a
fight to remember. (A bow here to action director Parvez Shaikh for the
execution of that brief scene.)
Coming from a deeply patriarchal
industry serving a largely patriarchal audience, these flashes amount to a
noteworthy statement from Kapoor.
That statement would have meant a
lot more though, if the film as a whole did not sideline women so completely. Pushpa
Pandey herself is a marginal player in the central drama. The only female
character of any importance to the plot is Hina Siddiqui (Sayani Gupta, wow!),
whose personal calamity changes Jolly. A witness’ mother makes an impactless
appearance. I wonder if it has struck the team of Jolly LLB 2 that everyone else with a name in their script –
lawyers, relatives of lawyers, judges, witnesses – is a man.
Akshay Kumar deserves some praise
here for not allowing his starry swagger to rear its head except in the song
‘n’ dance routines. His Jolly is not quite as charismatic as Warsi’s lawyer was
in the first film, but he is interesting enough. This performance is not quite
as good as what he achieved in last year’s Airlift,
but it is engaging enough. Kapoor too must be commended for not allowing the
storyline to be overwhelmed by such a major star’s presence.
The supporting cast is a parade
of theatre stalwarts and seasoned character artistes from films. What a
pleasure for stage enthusiasts to see Bajaj (a former head of the National
School of Drama), V.M. Badola and Vinod Nagpal in the same big-screen
production. What a pleasure too to see an actor from Jammu & Kashmir
playing a cop from the J&K force, rather than an outsider to the state
attempting an accent: Sunil Kumar Palwal has a striking presence and will
hopefully be seen in more Hindi films in the coming years. (While on the
subject of accents, watch Inaamulhaq playing a Kashmiri pronounce “card”
differently within a span of a few seconds.)
My pick of the cast, as with Jolly LLB, is Saurabh Shukla playing the
eccentric judge, Sunder Lal Tripathi, whose veneer of idiocy camouflages his
don’t-mess-with-me attitude. That said, Shukla is not as memorable here as he
was playing the same character in the previous film. The difference between him
in 2013 and 2017 is a reminder that actors do not function in a vacuum in
films: great performances are born of great acting extracted by great
screenplays and great direction.
Jolly LLB
2, as it
turns out, is a mixed bag. The references to the Kashmir conflict and
Hindu-Muslim tensions are impressive because the film raises these crucial
issues without being in your face about them. It also bravely takes a swipe at
self-righteous deshbhakts in the
ongoing nationalist-versus-anti-national debate. The basic elements in the
story are teeming with potential. When it’s good, Jolly LLB 2 is alternately amusing and moving. Sadly, the patchy
treatment leaves it sagging too often.
So yes, it pulls off humour and
emotional resonance in several places, but those passages are also a reminder
of what might have been if more time and thought had been invested in the
writing of this film as a whole. Jolly
LLB 2 has its moments, poignant, political and profound, but it ain’t no Jolly LLB.
Rating
(out of five stars): **1/2
CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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138 minutes 31 seconds
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This
article was also published on Firstpost:
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