Jazbaa – An Ardor Absent. Review on Jazbaa

A successful lawyer’s daughter is kidnapped; the ransom is that she must defend a known thief, murderer and rapist. She banks on the help of a suspended, vagrant cop, who nurses a college-level unrequited affection for her, who is as cool about breaking the law – just to keep it – as her. In the end it’s about blurring the boundaries between law keepers and lawbreakers, about a mother’s revenge, about a lack of faith in our judicial system, which is contorted to suit the rich, the famous, and the powerful.

The movie starts with Ash running a PTA race at her daughter’s school, like a flatfooted, pregnant steeplechaser, with you gripping the handlebars of the recliners in the fear the baby might tumble out any moment. She announces she is matronly-fit – she shows she can stretch and bend without wincing, or without the seams of her tight running suit ripping off. The movie heralds that she’s back: unconditionally, ready to pay the credit card bills of an unemployed husband and fat baby in tow.

The plot has little tension, except in flickering moments, which show Ash forlornly caressing the passport photo of her kidnapped daughter, as if she were rubbing chicken curry stains off it to save it for an admission into some ballet school at a later date, and wiping away an iffy tear that sneaks past the gates of her humongous, mascaraed eyelashes. At the end, we’re back to a raving, ranting, delusional, drug-induced politician’s son, for help in solving the crime – alas – when are we going to get a little – just a little creative with our craft?

She’s a successful, swinging lawyer, who doesn’t hesitate to put words in her client’s mouths, tamper with evidence, and commit perjury; and therefore it becomes hard for the audience to discover any lurking sympathy for her. She breaks every known law of confidentiality and ethics by using every banal move, and stooping down to any extent, to secure leads and evidence. The law is rotten in this nation, and so is she – in a dangerous habit of winning every case at whatever cost – whatever. She’s very much into the game, and what happens to her, is only too obvious and predictable – an outcome of an animal following the law of the jungle. Her characterization is lame, and out of sync.

We seem to be in an abysmal crime-solving stage – there is no forensics in India – beyond what a magnifying glass can discover. There is no justice for the audience either – where is the commitment of the moviemakers to a family that blocks half a holiday, and artery-clogging popcorn for the Box-office?

And finally, poor Irrffan is kept wistfully pining away for Ash; his love for her remains unconsummated, which shows Bollywood’s penchant for silly protocol, where a lowly character artiste, even though he may have acted in an Oscar winning movie, may never aspire to an ex-girlfriend of a Khan, or the bahu of a Bachchan khandaan; she is unachievable in the pecking order of things here. Poor guy, he lusted after Piku too, but to no avail. His is a roving soul thirsting for love – it can find quietude only in the person of someone more readily available and in his league – maybe a Sunny Leone or a Manissa Lamba.

The dialogue is stilted, the performances are jaded, and the drama just drags on. I wonder why a rapist must take off his shirt at a sedate pace to enjoy his hunt? The usual ads, in this case, of Nano, which Namo couldn’t help sell, are a bit of a hard sell – which swinging daughter from a rich family will drive and be seen dead in one?

The music is as staid as the movie; Honey Singh’s beats sound uncannily familiar – he seems to be in as much of a musically challenged hiatus as his friend, A R Rahman, who, since he began outsourcing music to students from the flea market, has not produced anything worth tuning into.