In some parallel dimension we aren’t aware of, there must be theatre chains screening Mysskinin Jai Hind 2 and Mani Ratnamin Jai Hind 2 and Selvaraghavanin Jai Hind 2 , and, to avoid confusion, star and director Arjun appends his name to his movie: it’s called Arjunin Jai Hind 2 . Not that there’s much doubt. There’s a scene featuring the national flag, and the plot itself is a rehash of Gentleman , one of Arjun’s biggest hits. The crux is quality education, which the poor don’t have access to. Also from that film are the two heroines — one nice, one naughty. For a while, I was pleasantly surprised by Nandini (Surveen Chawla), a demure Brahmin girl who isn’t draped in a chiffon sari, positioned near industrial fans and asked to sing songs about ants that have invaded her body, like Ranjitha in the original Jai Hind .
The romance between Nandini and Abhimanyu (Arjun) is mature, and when we first glimpse Nandini, we see a thaali . How wonderful, I thought, for this kind of mass- masala entertainer to telegraph, so early on, the unavailability of its heroine. And then we get the second half where a twenty-something student falls for Abhimanyu and imagines a dream duet where he circles around her in a fancy bike as she sways in a miniskirt. It’s a marvel one of our filmmakers hasn’t yet written that best seller How to Have It All .
Arjunin Jai Hind 2 is the kind of film about which you shrug and say, “Well, if you liked Jai Hind …” This isn’t exactly a sequel (the characters are different) but it’s suffused with the same vibe: how to do your bit for the nation while demonstrating your prowess in the martial arts. Don’t laugh. At least I didn’t during the action sequences, which are pretty well done. Arjun looks amazingly fit, and he actually seems to be executing these gravity-defying moves, without the help of wires.
The narrative, too, is spry — at least up to a point — leaping back and forth, thanks to a series of flashbacks used to advance the plot. And then, perhaps realising that his core audience isn’t after education-oriented message-mongering, Arjun unleashes the rocket launchers. The film suddenly (one might say randomly) switches gears — it becomes a prison drama, and then we get a hostage-rescue scenario. But is there any point complaining about coherence or plausibility? If you have to watch a film about a one-man army, you could do worse than watch one with Arjun in it. He totally pulls it off. Of how many fifty-plus leading men can you say that?
A version of this review can be read at >baradwajrangan.wordpress.com
