Review of Jawan / जवान, directed by Atlee

My fun fact of the day before starting this review is this: Jawan has become the first movie I’ve ever traveled an immense amount of distance for just to see. My friend and I had planned to see the movie at the AMC in Times Square, which is where we first saw several other Bollywood movies and kind of has become a spot for us, but she texted me one day and asked me if I was willing to go to Jamaica to see a movie.

Jamaica as in deep Queens, and then we could walk down the street for a bit and get Bangladeshi food. And because I was up for an adventure, I said yes.

So I took the F train all the way from central Brooklyn to almost the end of the line in Queens. It took an hour and a half to get to the movie theater in Jamaica, but I made it in one piece despite the rain.

We were also one of the only ones in the theater because of it, and it was a completely different vibe than the Bollywood crowd we watch movies with. No one was reacting, which made it kind of boring. Anyways, we had so much to say about Jawan because we were extremely confused after watching this one at first.

Let’s get into the review!

Shah Rukh Khan’s latest is a slippery action movie with quite a few twists.

While I usually do my movie reviews recalling the entire summary, I don’t think I could do this film justice by revealing all of the twists for those who haven’t seen this yet. I’ll do a very basic summary because of that, but be warned I am talking about the existence of certain things so if you’d like to go in blind, you might want to click out.

This film begins with an action sequence set in the northeast part of India, as a village is massacred by a bunch of thugs and a man, who was discovered by the locals and nursed back to health, takes out the villains and becomes a hero of the village. There’s a time jump forward, and a train on the Mumbai metro has been hijacked by a group of women and a man.

Together, they take hostage the daughter of an influential businessman in the area and demand money, and the Indian military and government are put on the line to try and get the situation down before someone is killed.

With the money they receive, they use it in the name of good. This kickstarts a game of cat and mouse between the man, Azad, who is the head jailer of a women’s prison (the women he was with are a part of the prisoners) and an NSG officer who is trying to track him down.

In a twist of fate, they get married without her ever knowing who he is outside of the jail, and then things start getting really weird later on in the movie and several major plot twists take place, including in flashback scenes.

That’s all I’m going to say about the plot, as, like I mentioned before, this movie gets really deep into plot twist territory and can even lean bizarre at times because of it. My friend and I were both sorting out the facts with each other and online for a bit before we felt like we had a solid grip on the story, and this is a movie that’s honestly quite messy because of it.

Although the movie brands itself as empowering women, I genuinely think if that if it wanted to do that in a whole hearted way, we wouldn’t make a man the main character.

Some of these women’s stories are so underdeveloped and while we get flashback scenes for some of them explaining their stories, others are neglected. I wanted to know everyone’s stories, not just a few! Give me more women in action, but for me it needed to go a step further than this to truly be empowering.

Overall Thoughts

Like this is a fun action movie, but you really have to squint and close your eyes when it comes to questioning the plot because of these twists. Usually Bollywood movies are a bit out there stereotypically, but I felt like this movie just asked for major suspension of disbelief in a way that I hadn’t experienced before if we’re going to be honest.

It came across to me as a step up from Jawan, but neither of them are really 100% there in terms of storytelling. But this definitely does fall in masala film territory in how it blends multiple different genres into one. I’m glad I watched it, but I wouldn’t rewatch it if you’re going to be honest.

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