Jailer Movie Review: Superstar cop fails to arrest audience attention till the end

Long-time watchers of Rajinikanth, the unmatched superstar of southern cinema, are aware that he has a great sense of comic timing and smashing action styles, which have stood good for him to hold on to his title for nearly three generations. So when the titan joined with director Nelson Dilipkumar, known for black comedy flicks, one expected a delectable combo of both which is what the latest release ‘Jailer’ is categorised as. The much-awaited film, with its release dates postponed twice this year, finally hit theatres worldwide on August 10.

And what do fans get to watch as a treat? A nice, breezy, cool first half in which there is enough build-up created for an explosive second half. After all, in the first 90 minutes of the film, one only gets to see a relaxed, yet ruthless profile of the uber macho hero Rajini . He plays a retired, cautious, caring family man, bullied by his grandson and taken ‘lightly’ by his family which includes a charming Ramya Krishnan. He has a policeman son (Vasanth Ravi) who is shown as duty-conscious and honest. Yet, the swirling waves of crime snare the family members as they get to be tossed around in the tussle between the aged, yet agile ex-jailer, who fights till the end to save his son taken hostage and a merciless criminal, who stops at nothing.

What promises to be exciting at the intermission stage, with such kind of a pace and progress to the narrative, gets bogged down rather inexplicably. An accommodating storyline which forcibly takes in many stars and their characters to take the film forward (Shiva Raj Kumar, Mohan Lal, Jackie Shroff, Sunil) keeping multi-lingual audiences in mind, loses itself totally.

The muddle-headed approach drags the pace down as Rajinikanth braces up to take on the villain who has a deal struck to keep the hero’s captured son alive. An agonizing period ensues where a flashback shows a young Rajini as a tough taskmaster, which is just eye candy effect for his fans. With huge dollops of melodrama and the easy-paced style of the first half disappearing, the movie grinds to a halt after the bad guys drop dead and the hero walks away.

Vinayakan, a Malayalam film star, who has occasionally been seen in other language films is the prime antagonist who essays his role excellently, proving a match to the superstar’s gimmicky stunts. The item number of Tamannah doesn’t sizzle as well as it was meant to be, while the other film industry heroes casually go through the motions. Anirudh’s music is pretty effective with the BGM for the hero, the icing on the cake. For the undying fans of Thalaivar, the wait, it seems would continue a tad more as this venture doesn’t the high spots as expected.