2023 Movie
Dir. Atlee · India · Hindi
A wild and intense ride with the King of Bollywood at the helm as a modern day anti-corruption hi-tech Robin Hood
Through this action-packed, absolutely crazy ride of a movie, writer-director Atlee and Bollywood legend Shah Rukh Khan team up in Jawan to question the country’s corruption in multiple fields, including, but not limited to the agricultural sector, the healthcare industry, and the electoral system. They do so through an amped-up, explosion-filled spectacle led by a high-tech Robin Hood and his merry women inmates, who use terrorism in order to pay out loans for poor farmers and other promises that politicians give to their voters. It’s also intertwined with a romance plot that sees the vigilante and the single-parent counterterrorist chief in an unknowing enemies-to-lovers, mistaken identity marriage. It’s a strange film that tries to tackle as many political messages as possible, but it’s also downright entertaining with every plot twist it takes.
An emotional journey of a prison warden, driven by a personal vendetta while keeping up to a promise made years ago, recruits inmates to commit outrageous crimes that shed light on corruption and injustice, in an attempt to get even with his past, and that leads him to an unexpected reunion.
"Jawan sees Khan teaming up with Tamil writer and director Atlee in a gloriously convoluted story of family, activism, and revenge. It’s violent, it’s insane, and it’s an absolute rollercoaster."
— Proma Khosla
"“Jawan” will probably delight Khan’s established fans, and maybe uninitiated viewers, too, if only because he’s comfortably playing the hits, now with somewhat greater conviction and a little more polish."
— Simon Abrams
After an attack causes his amnesia, prison warden Azad recruits fellow inmates to commit crimes that expose the corruption and structural inequities that keeps the country’s impoverished down on their luck. One Mumbai Metro hijacking leads Azad to the past he’s forgotten, and an unexpected reunion.
Say what you will about Indian cinema, but no one can deny the pure spectacle plenty of their films possess. Jawan’s spectacle has some of the song-and-dance Indian film is known for, but it feels less like a compilation of over-the-top music videos. In the very start, one was actually used as a death countdown for one of the hostages in the hijacked metro. Along with high-octane action stunts, highly saturated shots, and a chaotic, nefarious Shah Rukh Khan, Jawan’s spectacle tops plenty of India’s latest action films, which makes its slightly convoluted plotlines so watchable.
So take V for Vendetta, and then add as many plot twists as possible, and you get this crazy, overloaded action flick with twice the amount of Shah Rukh Khan.
Isabella Endrinal is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. She's now free from the corporate night shift. Previous articles have been published in outlets such as NANG Magazine. She's currently catching up on some classic films… if she isn't coping with the fact that the Haikyu anime will end soon.
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