Jolly LLB 3

With his third instalment in the popular legal franchise, Subhash Kapoor returns to the familiar milieu of the courtroom, this time pitting two of his recurring lawyers against one another. Yet, though Jolly LLB 3‘s narrative had ample potential, it falls short of delivering the sharp, urgent edge its subject demands.

In Delhi, two lawyers, Jagdishwar Mishra (Akshay Kumar) and Jagdish Tyagi (Arshad Warsi), both called Jolly, are bitter rivals. Mishra often tricks clients into believing he is the Jolly they were looking for, which angers Tyagi. Sandhya (Amrita Rao), Tyagi’s wife, who works in an NGO, brings forward Janaki Rajaram Solanki (Seema Biswas), the widow of a farmer-poet from Parsaul, Rajasthan. Her husband has died by suicide after losing his ancestral land. Knowing that Janaki is poor and cannot pay heavy fees, Tyagi sends her to Mishra. But Mishra cleverly sends her back, leaving Tyagi with no choice but to fight the case himself. Meanwhile, Mishra joins hands with powerful industrialist Haribhai Khaitan (Gajraj Rao) and appears in court against Tyagi. Though Mishra initially triumphs, Janaki’s impassioned testimony exposes Khaitan’s predatory designs, shaking Mishra’s conscience. This reversal compels the two Jollys to set aside their animosity and unite in a bid for justice, with familiar judge Sundar Lal Tripathi (Saurabh Shukla) presiding over the case…

Jolly LLB 3 turns its attention to the contentious issue of land acquisition, where profit-driven industrialists displace farmers in the name of development, often with tragic consequences of homelessness and suicide. The film questions the adequacy of MSP policies and reminds us that, in the rhetoric of national progress, it is invariably the poor who are sacrificed. Here, the victims are the very farmers who once sustained the Green Revolution. Kapoor ensures that the narrative does not shy away from exposing these inequities, and if his method is sometimes blunt, his determination to confront the systemic failures of law and governance remains admirable. It also gestures towards the compromises of independent experts and academics, who at times bow to corporate interests. And when Khaitan finds himself cornered, the story brings in Vikram (Ram Kapoor), a London-based lawyer defending an Indian fugitive known as VM, thinly modelled on Vijay Mallya, underlining the nexus between corporate power and legal manoeuvring.

The film is at its most assured when the narrative remains inside the courtroom. Each exchange of arguments brings with it humour, flashes of satire, and a dramatic charge that connects us to the underlying themes. The final twenty minutes, too, achieve genuine emotional traction. But in a film running 157 minutes, these moments feel like isolated peaks in uneven terrain as Kapoor’s noble intentions are not always matched by effective execution. The Jolly LLB-franchise has thrived on its David-and-Goliath confrontations, but here, Haribhai Gajraj Rao, though positioned as the embodiment of unchecked wealth and influence, never acquires the menace that would justify his role. His villainy feels asserted rather than earned, with little in the way of compelling scenes to provoke genuine abhorrence. Elsewhere, tonal shifts jar. A scuffle, outside the courtroom, between Mishra and Tyagi over a mocking gesture feels underdeveloped and unconvincing. A subsequent sequence, where the two couples dine at an expensive restaurant, only to discover Justice Tripathi awkwardly courting a police officer (Shilpa Shukla), aims for comedy but adds little to the film. These digressions, symptomatic of a broader looseness, dilute the exigency of the film’s social critique.

In a film with supposedly two equally positioned protagonists, the question inevitably arises: who will dominate as the hero, and who will be reduced to support? In Jolly LLB 3, the answer is never in doubt. Akshay Kumar’s Mishra commands the spotlight, particularly in the climactic courtroom sequence where he delivers the weighty dialogues. At the same time, Arshad Warsi’s Tyagi is sidelined, literally absent for a stretch, convalescing in a hospital. When Tyagi finally returns to close the argument, the moment feels more like a token gesture than an earned triumph, akin to the perfunctory subsidies handed to farmers, as the dialogue itself points out. Ultimately, the decision to centre the film around two protagonists appears more like a calculated publicity ploy than a deliberate narrative strategy. But it has to be said that both actors deliver competent performances.

Gajraj Rao, weighed down by prosthetics is never quite as formidable an antagonist as the narrative requires. Huma Qureshi, Amrita Rao and Shilpa Shukla are relegated to the margins. Seema Biswas brings some dignity to Janaki. Though her character is often reduced to a portrait of frailty, teary-eyed yet determined, she imbues it with quiet strength. As ever, Saurabh Shukla is reliably efficient as Justice Tripathi, maintaining the consistency that has made him the franchise’s moral centre

Rangarajan Ramabadran’s cinematography captures the familiar cadences of courtroom drama with competence, though it rarely ventures into visual inventiveness. While Chandrashekhar Prajapati tries to keep the pace of the proceedings coherent, the uneven writing undermines the film’s overall rhythm. Mangesh Dhakde’s background score punctuates the emotional beats and courtroom tension effectively.

Jolly LLB 3 ends up as a well-intentioned yet underwhelming instalment. Despite its flashes of courtroom wit and social conscience, the film ultimately feels like a diluted shadow of the franchise it aspires to continue.

Hindi, Drama, Comedy, Color