Jailer Review: Rajinikanth Is A Star For All Seasons And All Regions

In Jailer, written and directed by Nelson Dilipkumar, a superannuated lawman played by Rajinikanth takes the law into his hands with impunity and summarily eliminates several bad guys. But the superstar isn’t quite the action hero of yore although the movie has all the trappings of a blockbuster.  

In what is essentially an ultra-violent crime drama about an erstwhile jailer who is forced to don the garb of a vengeance seeker years after his retirement, the charismatic lead actor assumes a circumspect, unflashy persona who does not swing into ‘action’ until he is left with no other option.

The protagonist, former Tihar Jail warden “Tiger’ Muthuvel Pandian, who once had prisoners live in dread of his whims, has hung up his boots. He now focuses on the career of his police officer-son, Arjun (Vasantha Ravi), who he has raised to be as honest and fearless as he was.

Muthu is a paragon of probity, a dutiful family man and, when push comes to shove, an unvanquishable thalaivar who brooks no trifling with things and people he holds dear. His transition from a seemingly docile grandfather going about his domestic chores to a vengeful executioner who wields a scimitar to deadly effect, does not take place until the film is well into its first half.

And when the process attains completion, the Anirudh Ravichander musical, which has only one lip-synched number performed on screen by Tamannaah Bhatia, comes up with something akin to a theme song that celebrates the superstar’s mass appeal across generations. The song erases the gulf between the fictional world of Muthuvel Pandian and the real universe that Rajinikanth has lorded over for decades.

Jailer is a Tamil film, but given the cameos by Mohanlal, Jackie Shroff, Shiva Rajkumar and Makarand Deshpande, several other languages are spoken by the actors, include Rajinikanth – Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu and Hindi. It is clearly and intrinsically a movie aimed at a pan-Indian audience.

One might argue that most Rajinikanth films are designed for nationwide consumption but Jailer isn’t just another Tamil-language film meant to be distributed in the form of dubbed versions. It is best to see its original version with subtitles because only then will one get a sense what the film is trying to achieve.

Not that the Rajinikanth aura is in need of any sort of resurrection. What Jailer does is project him for what he is and has always aspired to be – a star for all seasons and all regions.

Does the film serve its purpose? The first half of Jailer is engaging for the most part. Its second half isn’t half as riveting. In fact, it is sluggish and all over the place notwithstanding a couple of climactic twists that pack a reasonable punch.

In one scene in the second half, Muthu confronts a film director named Balu and exhorts him not to foist garbage on the audience in the name of commercial cinema. Give them clean family entertainment, he suggests.

There is a family all right at the heart of Jailer, but does the film live up to Muthu’s prescription. It doesn’t. For one, there is way too much gore in the film for it to be suitable for all age groups. Not all of the violence in the film is perpetrated by the villain who dunks gang members who goof up into sulphuric acid vats. The hero, too, is just as ruthless.

In one sequence, Muthu decapitates a goon and then proceeds to regret that the headless man can longer fulfil his desire to see Muthu’s angry face. The film plays out in a hyper masculine world where the women do not so much as play second fiddle. They are allowed no play at all.

Muthu treats his wife and daughter-in-law as liabilities incapable of fending for themselves. So, every time the bad guy threatens to harm his family, the patriarch has to step in directly or indirectly to protect them. The only other woman in the film who has a few scenes is a movie actress played by Tamannaah. She is plied with gifts by two men – a film director and a male star, neither of whom think it is necessary to ask her what she wants.            

As the film begins, Muthuvel Pandian (Rajinikanth) leads a quiet life with his wife Vijaya (Ramya Krishnan), daughter-in-law Shwetha (Mirna Menon) and grandson. He is happy to shop for vegetables, help his grandson shoot insta reels, and indulge in prickly banter with a Bharathiyar-quoting taxi driver (Yogi Babu) who keeps threatening to run him over.

His son, an assistant commissioner of police, is on the trail of a gang of antique smugglers led by the vicious Varma (Vinayakan). One fine day, the officer goes missing. Word gets around that he is dead. Muthu’s wife blames him for the fate that has befallen Arjun. It is you who conditioned him to be so upright and uncompromising, she laments.

The “tiger” dormant in the guilt-ridden Muthu resurfaces. Roping in the cabbie who needles him needlessly, the ex-jailer kills the man who is believed to have murdered his son. The kill takes place off-screen, a sign that Jailer is going to be a Rajinikanth film with a difference.

In subsequent action scenes, however, Muthu uses sharp-edged weapons and guns to dispatch the hoodlums to their doom but in most other sequences he relies on a group of snipers provided to him by his friend from Mandya, Narasimha (Shiva Rajkumar).

In Kabali, Rajinikanth’s sphere of action was in Malaysia, in Kaala in a Mumbai slum and in his last release Annaatthe (2021), circumstances saw him move to Kolkata. In Jailer, he operates all across India because he has friends everywhere. That is where Mohanlal and Jackie Shroff come in.

The guest stars do their bit and move on. It is left to Rajinikanth to shoulder the weight of the erratic script. Playing an age-appropriate character, the septuagenarian star pulls his weight all the way though in a role that, despite the absence of the customary vim and vigour, fits him like a glove.

Jailer does intermittently have you in its grip because Rajinikanth has it in to whip up a storm even at half tilt.