Jailer 2 is, by most measures, an improvement over Jailer, but given that Jailer was a mental toothache of a movie, what is there to pat oneself on the back for? The answer? Nothing. The most disappointing thing about this sequel is not merely that it's tiringly bloated, tediously numbing, and a cinematic tumor that needs to be surgically excised from the brain. The most dispiriting realization that emerges, scene after scene, is that those of us who bought into Nelson Dilipkumar's promise because of his deliciously dark humor (Kolamavu Kokila and Doctor) should not expect those same sensibilities, those same amusing pleasures, from the filmmaker who has allowed himself to be sucked into the vacuum of monotonous "hero elevation" montages, cool-looking violence, and mind-sapping dryness. To say that Jailer 2 is purely for Rajinikanth fans would reveal less about the film than about the kind of cinematic pleasures it offers its audience—or, more broadly, about the willingness of mainstream moviegoers to reward films that look the same and feel the same.
It's only up to a point that you can criticize films like Jailer, Pushpa, and other similar "mass movie" progenitors and successors. After a while, you have to turn your gaze toward the people who buy tickets for these films and erupt in ecstasy at the same old hero introductions and hero-posing-while-killing-villains moments. The effects these directors pursue remain unchanged: to excite viewers with the sight of their favorite actors smiling at the camera or walking away from explosions in slow motion. What changes is the execution, and even that mostly comes down to putting the camera to the left, right, below, above, or directly in front of the hero. One excuse that's often trotted out is that the mass audience doesn't visit theaters regularly and leads such dreary lives that it needs "stress busters" like Jailer 2 to unwind. But if these viewers are looking for an escape from life's monotony, isn't the same sort of escapism already available in abundance on OTT platforms, where one formulaic mass entertainer follows another? The theatrical experience may offer a communal rush that streaming cannot replicate, but that doesn't explain why the rush itself must be built from such a monotonous collection of cinematic gestures.
If the argument is that people need cinema to escape their dreary lives, shouldn't that escape offer something more than a temporary rush of familiar images and manufactured excitement? A Jailer 2 won't resolve anyone's personal problems, nor will it remedy the nauseating mediocrity at the heart of the mainstream film business. The audience celebrates and rewards aggressively adequate non-events, and the industry, encouraged by those enthusiastic responses, produces more meh-sterpieces. This two-way exchange of incompetence creates a vast, self-perpetuating machine that vomits up mouse-sized portions of imagination. The real tragedy, though, is that a director like Nelson, who started out with such a distinctive sense of dark humor, now appears to be courting this machine in pursuit of recognition, box-office success, or the chance to work with bigger stars. Whatever the motivation, the result is the suppression of the very individuality that once made his films distinctive. But what's the point of such recognition if it comes from wooing a crowd that doesn't seem to demand much from cinema beyond empty hero worship and lame violence, let alone expect it to venture into the realm of the fantastic, the subjective, or the great?
The Nelson of Kolamavu Kokila and Doctor would probably have unearthed amusingly incestuous overtones in the relationship between Kantha (Vidya Balan) and Chakri Kalpak (Mithun Chakraborty), given how often he kisses her hand. He might have done something more with all the discussion around the color of water, the villain who makes a man sell tea beneath his photograph, or the chubby store owner who is asked to sit on a bucket inside of which a man is trapped like an animal. This is a director who, after all, included a scene in Kolamavu Kokila in which a woman beats up men inside a room while everyone outside assumes she's being sexually assaulted (the perverted goons wait for their chance to enter the room one by one). Who's to say the same Nelson couldn't have written similarly double-edged moments in Jailer 2, or something even cheerfully darker? It wouldn't have been a problem if Nelson had moved beyond his dark-comedy days toward something better. The problem is that he appears to have traded that distinctive sensibility for something significantly worse: something tedious, lifeless, and artistically deficient.
In Jailer 2, Nelson puts more effort into worshiping Rajinikanth's image than into writing a story that could actually lend credibility to it. The more shots I saw of him smiling and walking in slow motion, the more I began to feel that the filmmakers were congratulating themselves for getting away with what can only be described as the beige equivalent of human achievement—and doing so with style, naturally, and in slow motion. Nelson's ambition in Jailer 2 is on life support; he knows how to make a wheelchair-bound Chakri launch himself off a ramp and fly into the back of a truck, but he doesn't know how to prevent his film from feeling insubstantial and weightless. Every scene simply slides off the screen, leaving behind nothing more substantial than a puff of vapor. Nothing ever seems worth remembering or crucial enough to hold on to. There is a lack of urgency throughout, as Nelson tries hard to keep everything "lightweight" for, I presume, the family audience. The director seems almost determined to keep you in a jovial mood, which is why the emotional scenes not only feel like heavy stones being hurled at your head but also make you wince at their cheap, third-rate melodramatic sentiments. Yet even these unbearably heavy scenes manage to establish only mild conflicts, all of which are resolved far too easily, often within seconds.
In other words, absolutely nothing in Jailer 2 lingers in your head. Each scene wipes out the memory of the one before it until everything eventually evaporates from both the screen and your brain. There is, however, one revelatory moment in the film, and what it reveals is Nelson's casting process. For his birthday, Chakri is asked to swipe through photos of famous dancers and select one for the occasion. He picks Nora Fatehi. Nelson, similarly, must have been given the power to hand-pick his cast by swiping through photographs, with the only difference being that, unlike Chakri, he can choose multiple options. This explains why Jailer 2 is so star-studded. It's packed with well-known faces who, alas, are required to display the bare minimum of brilliance. What the cameos and big names essentially achieve is the sublime art of being forgettable. I won't spoil who shows up or what they do here because Jailer 2 has little else to justify its existence. Tell your friends which famous faces appear in the film, and they won't need to visit the theater—unless, of course, they want to see Rajinikanth walking in slow motion.
Nelson could have cast background actors or struggling performers in these roles. The entertainment industry is a brutal place, and thousands of people struggle every day to find work. Why not give some of them a chance through these cameo roles instead of pulling off the same tired stunt of hiring superstars for five seconds? Those big names can live without those five seconds. For an unknown actor, they could be an opportunity to make a genuine impression. But you can't expect much sanity or logic from filmmakers who seem to equate success with satisfying the most undemanding impulses of the mass audience. Well, the rubbish Nelson feeds his audience in Jailer 2 was met with applause in my theater. If that applause indicates anything, it's that the two-way cult of adequacy will continue to operate at a self-aggrandizing pace. Nothing, it seems, will stop Jailer 3 from happening. Be prepared.
Final Score - [1.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times