Jai Gangaajal (2016)
Director: Prakash Jha
Writers: Prakash Jha
Stars: Priyanka Chopra, Prakash Jha, Manav Kaul
Strength: Good acting
Weakness: Long narratives
Runtime: 149 minutes
Rating: 2.5/5
Plot: A newly appointed Senior Inspector (Priyanka Chopra) finds herself against very powerful goons and having people from her own department against her.
Review: The best part about 'Jai Gangaajal', director Prakash Jha's latest venture, is a surprise acting turn by Jha himself as a corrupt-cop-with-a-latent-conscience. It seems as if he has been doing this all his life.
Everything else in this sequel of 'Gangaajal', which replaces the khaki-clad Ajay Devgan with Priyanka Chopra, and pouring acid in the eye with a hanging from the nearest tree/post/fan, falls strictly in the seen-before category. Bankipur is a village overrun by greedy politicians, corrupt cops, and self-serving locals. The detailing is just a little different—an effeminate flunkey (Sharma), a young girl refusing to give up her patch of land (Tamotia), a podgy baddie in colourful shirts (Kamat)—but overall, this is Jha's much-traversed universe, in which the lawless rule, till the hero (in this instance, the heroine) shows up to rid the chaos. Priyanka Chopra's too-sophisticated unmade-up-make-up is very distracting, even in her few convincing moments. And the film goes on for far too long, even when we know how all of it will end.
The villains, called Babloo Bhaiyya (Kaul), and his younger brother Dabloo Bhaiyya (Kamat), are in cahoots with powerful land-grabbers and goons. Of course SP Abha Mathur (Priyanka Chopra) runs afoul of this syndicate, and of course, she is threatened. But this kind of film also needs redemption, so the bad guys are vanquished, and the weak find collective strength to wreck questionable vigilante justice, in order for everyone to go home happy.
Reviewed By Minam Haque
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