Jailer is just another over-the-top movie that fails to establish realistic connections with the actual world.
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Influence viewers, shift perceptions and reframe prejudices. Celebrated art, be it a movie or otherwise, cannot afford to even unconsciously escape these qualifiers, especially when the celebrity figure(s) consciously capitalises on the love and admiration of their followers.
Does the recent box-office hit Jailer meet these qualifications?
Art should lift the audience from their fixed imagination into a world of wonder.
The presentation of the protagonist (Rajinikanth as Muthuvel Pandian) as a ‘good’ police officer, as a ‘jailer’, cannot cultivate new imagination, let alone wonder, among the weekend hero-worshiper masala-movie audience.
The good jailer not only heroically practises his working-age public duty with authority but brings up his son (Vasanth Ravi as Arjun Pandian) as an ‘honest’ assistant commissioner of police (ACP) with characteristic gusto.
These old-fashioned and monotonously simple ‘honest’ police characters need a rest in contemporary cinema, more so in the commercial ones.
What about imagining protagonist characters around overworked, indebted, WhatsApp-trained, polarised, pseudo-science-follower, apolitical, narcissistic, fast-food dependent, consumerist, disengaged, unemployed youth of our contemporary time?
What about imagining protagonist characters around overworked, indebted, WhatsApp-trained, polarised, pseudo-science following, apolitical, narcissistic, fast-food dependent, consumerist, disengaged and unemployed youth of contemporary time?
Can such an alternative real-world character entertain the celebrity-obsessed weekend cinema audience by a parallel offering of wonder and connection with contemporary reality?
That is the inescapable major challenging task for the content of contemporary commercial cinema.
Further, to give an easy and hyper-popular contemporary touch as an ‘ideal’ grandfather, Muthuvel Pandian has been dedicating his modest retirement life to encouraging his under-age grandson to train as a photographer, of which the former presumably has no professional training.
However, the movie ends, perhaps consciously, before Muthuvel Pandian, as the ideal grandfather can prepare his grandson for the logical final step, given the times we live in, in his training— becoming an attention-seeking, narcissistic, unprofessional YouTuber!
By the time of the intermission, it is clear what could be on the plate over the popcorn and coke.
It is no-brainer that the protagonist would make a heroic appearance to retaliate against the villain (Vinayakan as Varman) who masterminded the disappearance of the protagonist’s honest ACP son.
The villain’s innovation in the style of executing enemies, by first hanging them upside down, followed by sinking them in the well-like chamber connected with pipes with burning chemicals is unique.
It can reasonably be an imagination of the level of the brain-washing technique invented by the mysterious scientist (Santosh Dutta as Gobeshok) of the dystopian Kingdom of Diamond under the patronage of tyrant king (Utpal Dutt as Rirak Raja) as Satyajit Ray imagined for children in 1980.
However, the movie ends, perhaps consciously, before Muthuvel Pandian, as the ideal grandfather can prepare his grandson for the logical final step, given the times we live in, in his training— becoming an attention-seeking, narcissistic, unprofessional YouTuber!
However, there is a twist in the tale at the very end of Jailer. The ostensibly honest ACP son shows his true colours. But the intelligent protagonist has guessed it in advance. Hence, he has kept snipers ready to strike his dishonest son, only to reinforce his untainted singular ‘good’ police officer character.
This is indeed a flavour in an otherwise expected storyline.
The movie clearly capitalises entirely on superheroes and not its content and social message, to entertain admirers and fans, for around three hours on the weekend.
The protagonist’s slow-motioned appearance from the back, exaggerated style of wearing spectacles, and polemic dialogue are not necessarily an artistic imagination per se.
Further, the exaggerated display of swords, knives, guns and bombs to show the enmity between the protagonist and villain by mercilessly slitting heads is just brainless vulgarity to keep the audience entertained and, perhaps, bereft of the art of imagination.
Therefore, Jailer is a tale of jailed imagination.
