Shah Rukh Khan's comeback tour continues with Jawan (2023), which is reminiscent of some of Kahn's older movies while still being very much its own thing. Critics have mentioned thematic similarities to Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani, Chak De! India, Swades, and Chennai Express, but it really feels like writer-director Atlee looked at the over the top political metaphor of Oh Darling! Yeh Hai India! and decided that metaphor is for cowards.
The plot of Jawan is fairly straightforward, but it's one of those movies in which the backstory is slowly filled in through a series of nested flashbacks. The film opens in 1986, with a mysterious bandaged amnesiac (Shah Rukh Khan) saving a remote village from an attacking force of Chinese soldiers. Then the movie jumps to the present, with a subway train taken hostage by a small band of highly trained women, each with their own special skillset: Lakshmi (Priyamani), Doctor Eeram (Sanya Malhotra), Helena (Sanjeeta Bhattacharya), Ishkra (Girija Oak), Kalki (Lehar Khan), and Jahnvi (Aaliyah Qureisha). The women answer to a mysterious bandaged mastermind (Shah Rukh Khan), who demands a hostage negotiator that's interesting to talk to.
The authorities select Narmada (Nayanthara), head of the counter-terrorist unit Force One. The bandaged man plays the villain for a while, then reveals his demands - four hundred million rupees, enough to pay off the loans of seven hundred thousand farmers. As it happens, Alia (Ashlesha Thakur), daughter of legitimate businessman/arms dealer Kalee (Vijay Sethupathi), is on the train, and he agrees to pay the ransom. This is not a coincidence.
When the train arrives at the station, Narmada has her men waiting to arrest the hijackers, but by this point the bandaged man has won over the hostages by explaining the predatory nature of loans to farmers and the resulting high rate of suicide among them, and because he only pretended to kill a hostage to show how serious he was. With the help of the hostages and a fair amount of hugely unlikely technological trickery, the hijackers escape, but before they go the leader asks Alia to tell her father his name: Vikram Rathore.
He is not actually Vikram Rathore. He's Azad, warden of a women's prison that focuses on rehabilitation and restorative justice rather than punishment. His six accomplices are all inmates at the prison who have all suffered various forms of social injustice, and Azad's plan is to expose government corruption, help the common man, and, as later flashbacks reveal, clear the name of his father, Vikram Rathore, who was branded a traitor and apparently murdered after exposing defective weapons that Kalee's company sold to the military.
Meanwhile, Azad's foster mother Kaveri (Riddhi Dogra) is looking for a bride for him. The latest candidate was too busy to meet with him, and rather than send her parents she sent her ten year old daughter Suji (Seeza Saroj Mehta), who is in the market for a father. Azad and Suji get along well, and when her mother turns out to be Narmada, they get along as well. The match is made.
Azad wants to tell her the truth, but before he can bring himself to do it, on their wedding night, she discovers that he's the criminal she's been chasing. Before she can arrest him, though, the honeymoon cabin is attacked by armed men led by Kalee's brother Manish (Eijaz Khan), who thinks they're working together. He shoots Narmada and is about to kill Azad when Vikram Rathore appears. He's not dead after all, but he still has amnesia. On the other hand, he is a decent fellow and a trained soldier, so he's happy to rescue his son even though he feels no emotional connection. It does not go well for Manish.
Kalee was in Russia attending an International Conference of Evil Businessmen, which is the kind of thing that happened a lot in Nineties Bollywood action movies. He's hoping to raise enough money to buy himself into political office, and then open up India as a haven for evil businessmen to build massive polluting factories without having to worry about environmental regulations or basic safety. (This is not a subtle movie.) A mobster with a Darth Vader breath mask offers to put up the money, threatening dire consequences if he is not paid back on time. But before Kalee can put his plans into action, he needs to take revenge on his old enemy Vikram for Manish's death.
So Kalee wants revenge and power, in that order. Vikram, Azad, and the ladies want to steal Kalee's money, to end his power and make India a better place for the common people. Narmada, who is also not dead, wants to arrest her wayward husband, though there's a good chance that she can be won over by the right bit of exposition. The plot may be complicated, but the sides are clear, and there's room for key cameos from Sanjay Dutt and Deepika Padukone.
When an actor is playing a dual role, it's important that the characters are distinctive enough to be easily distinguishable. Azad is a fairly typical SRK protagonist, prone to big displays of emotion, impassioned and inspiring speeches, and dancing with his arms extended. Vikram, as an older amnesiac, is quirky and largely detached from what's going on around him. He's just happy to help, especially if helping involves spontaneous displays of violence.
The characters are also distinguished in the action scenes; Azad is an over the top Bollywood action hero, skilled and blessed with a great deal of luck, especially evil henchmen who keep forgetting that they have guns and attacking one at a time. Vikram is more like an over the top South Indian action hero, operating on an entirely different level. He's capable of the kind of stunts you see in Bahubali or RRR.
As huge and improbable as the actions scenes are, though, it's the plot that really stretches suspension of disbelief, particularly the notion that Azad and his friends can achieve lasting political change through their Robin Hood antics; at one point they overhaul India's entire medical system in the space of five hours. It's a movie with its heart in the right place, especially Azad's final speech, in which he pleads with the public to use the power of their vote carefully, asking those seeking office what they will do to help the country and the common people instead of being distracted by fear or labels. And that could lead to social change, but acts of heroic crime probably won't.
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