In Bollywood’s recent playbook, ageing superstars are paired with South Indian directors to revive screen legacies via a mass action-filled entertainer. Sometimes the formula clicks (Jawan); at other times, it falters (Sikandar). Telugu filmmaker Gopichand Malineni teaming up with Sunny Deol for Jaat fits squarely within this trend. Sadly, the film is a noisy, overstuffed spectacle where predictability replaces plot, and nostalgia gets mistaken for depth.
Jaat begins with a group of Sri Lankan labourers led by Ranatunga (Randeep Hooda) and his brother, Somulu (Vineet Kumar Singh), fleeing civil war after unearthing a trunk of stolen gold. They bribe a police officer and settle in a coastal village in Andhra Pradesh. Fifteen years later, Ranatunga has transformed into a brutal don, grabbing village land to help a foreign company extract minerals, and silencing any opposition with gruesome violence. When a young girl writes to the President for help, a CBI Officer Satyamurthi (Jagapathi Babu) is sent in. Meanwhile, a nameless, brooding stranger (Sunny Deol) enters the scene and soon finds himself involved with the events in the village.
Jaat is a textbook example of a film built entirely around star power and action set-pieces, with a screenplay that feels reverse-engineered to serve them. The story – thin, scattered, and riddled with clichés – offers little support for Deol’s heavy-handed heroics. There’s a desperate attempt to revive past glory – Deol doesn’t lift a hand pump this time, but a ceiling fan pillar! However, the effect is neither fresh nor thrilling. Shockingly, the action sequences – the supposed mainstays of the film – are lazily choreographed, filled with airborne henchmen and gravity-defying stunts that border on parody. Thus, we get a tired collage of action tropes and empty fanfare, wrapped in a story that never earns our attention or excitement. Not even for the film’s final twist.
Before Sunny Deol throws his first punch in Jaat, he reminds us (loudly) that the legend of his ‘dhaai kilo ka haath’ is well-known in the North, and now it is South India’s turn to get acquainted with it. It’s a moment of meta-theatre, where the actor’s ageing body (Deol is 67) is folded into the mythology of his enduring on-screen persona. The film positions him not just as a Ram-like saviour defeating an adversary from Sri Lanka, but also as a symbolic extension of the Jaat regiment – at once righteous, indestructible, and forever at the service of the soil. Which it hammers this point home with tiresome repetition.
The attempt to include a ‘strong woman’ in the form of SI Vijaya Lakshmi (Saiyami Kher) to lend the film some gravitas fades away within minutes as she and her all-women police team are stripped and humiliated by the villain’s wife (Regina Cassandra) and her henchmen. The film wastes no time turning her into yet another victim in need of rescue, clearing the stage for the grand entrance of our protagonist. Meanwhile, the CBI officer Satya Murthy tasked with investigating the chaos, spends so much time en route that he arrives only after the dust has settled. His role is reduced to a punchline that merely reinforces Hindi cinema’s age-old rule: the cops only reach after it’s all over.
In a film crafted entirely for Sunny Deol’s fists to do the talking, there’s little to talk about a performance. The supporting cast, including Regina Cassandra and Jagapathi Babu, fare no better. Saiyami Kher is supposedly cast as a powerful police officer only to be rendered powerless. Only Randeep Hooda, as Ranatunga, is given just enough room to make his villainy somewhat convincing. And Vineet Kumar Singh, playing Somulu, brings restraint to a part that could have easily slipped into caricature.
Rishi Punjabi’s cinematography rarely pauses for breath, as it constantly chases the hero in hyper-stylized action mode. Navin Nooli’s editing keeps the pace brisk – almost to a fault – to ensure there is never a quiet moment, let alone a contemplative one. The sound design is overwhelmed by S Thaman’s deafening background score – now a predictable staple in his Hindi films. The song Touch Kiya, featuring Urvashi Rautela, feels jarring and awkwardly wedged into the story. While Deol’s grand entry number, Oh Rama Shri Rama, is uninspired, and entirely forgettable.
Ultimately, Jaat is a tailor-made vehicle mainly to elevate Sunny Deol’s star image—and for his fans, there’s little here that will disappoint. On that front, it delivers what it promises, nothing more. For other cinemagoers, let’s just say that you could do a lot better with your time and money.
Hindi, Action, Drama, Color