"What is a film? It is a mosaic made of time" - Andrei Tarkovsky
With Jailer, you can see a lot of ideas borrowed from Nelson’s first film, Kolamavu Kokila. Jailer’s opening sequence is that of Varma killing all suspected snitches instead of trying to find out who actually is the snitch and sparing others. This scene establishes how human life is a plaything for Varma. In KoKo he used the same setup (Nayanthara’s character requests Mohan to kill all suspects “just to be sure”) to establish how Kokila’s innocence is deceptive. Another setup borrowed from KoKo is how Yogi Babu inadvertently gets himself into compromising situations: in KoKo he ends up transporting “kolamavu” in his van while in Jailer he ends up transporting a dead body in his cab. Even a Breaking Bad reference (of disposing of a dead body using acid) makes a return. With these throwbacks, Nelson goes back to what worked for him in KoKo. If this was Nelson’s way of saying “I am back”, then he is right.
What I loved the most about Jailer was how he did not make Rajni, now 72 years old, do anything that would be unusual for his age - like romancing an actress half his age or elaborate hand-to-hand combat. This has been my gripe with Rajni films lately because no matter how hard you try, you cannot suspend disbelief to that extent. Nelson eschews the family-audience-pleasing template for something very Nelson-esque: dark, and quirky. And it was a delight seeing Rajni do his thing in this genre. We see him do things that he has never done in his 48-year stint in cinema like unflinchingly slashing someone’s head off their body, telling his wife and daughter-in-law to “just push it” when a bloody dead body lands on their lap, and so on.
The mass scenes work so wonderfully because everything is believable. We do not see a 70-year-old granddad punch people into the air. Instead, we see him getting others to do the job for him by leveraging the connections that he has built over the years. He is formidable not because he can do dangerous things but because he can get dangerous things done without getting his hands dirty. Now, that is power.
Nelson cleverly uses this pragmatic setup for what I consider to be the greatest cameo(s) in an Indian film; the entrances of Mohanlal and Shivaraj Kumar made the theatre erupt. Thanks to brilliant writing, we are shown how badass they both are in a matter of a few seconds. The cameos are not bland and done for the sake of having a cameo (like in the case of Pathaan). They are done tastefully, with the characters playing pivotal roles in the story.
Nelson also escapes the trap (aka trope) of showing an hour-long flashback story of a younger Rajni where he does punch people into the air purely for the sake of fan service. Instead, Nelson again does it cleverly, giving us a crisp 10-minute sequence (that does not involve any punching) that shows how intimidating Jailer was in his youth (the de-aging was surprisingly well done too).
One has to give props to Rajni for finally, and probably for the first time in a long time, surrendering himself completely to the story and not letting his star power get in the way. He polishes the shoes of another co-star, dances as a mere prop in the background for a dance number, and sits helplessly as he watches his nemesis insult him with a silly victory dance (which was a delight to watch). We have seen antagonists defeat (if only temporarily) Rajni but we have never seen Rajni get humiliated for it in such a way.
The second half is surely weaker compared to the first. Post intermission, the film turns into a heist comedy film. The heist is mediocre but the comedy compensates for the mediocrity. I barely cared about the heist being dull because I was high on Nelson’s humor which was dark, quirky, and above all, random. What is so funny about “western bathroom” or “refraction”? There is no “joke” in it in the traditional sense that there is no setup, twist, or punchline. Yet, it makes you laugh. I think my favorite one is the scene where Yogi Babu takes and squeezes a tomato on his own face. No explanation, or justification. Just a purely random, non-sensical, absurd gag. Given how baseless and random many of Nelson’s jokes are, one might expect it to get tiringly repetitive. But what happened with me is quite the opposite - I fell in love with the quirkiness more with each joke.
The Kavaala song is basically Nelson’s sense of humor on steroids; it is what you get when you give Nelson a big budget and free rein, and boy was it entertaining. The story cuts in and out during the song sequence and all throughout, there are random gags taking place while the story keeps moving forward. Tamannah sizzles in her cameo role (probably the 2nd best cameo role in Indian cinema?) and Anirudh’s peppy music matches the tone of the narration perfectly. Nelson does a terrific job of walking the tightrope between making Thalaivar shake some leg to satisfy fans but not doing it so much to the extent that it compromises the tone and pace of the film.
Wide-angle shots are used for almost every major character in the film. It somehow amplifies the essence of every character - it makes Jailer more menacing, Varma more maniacal, and caricatures the funny characters like Dhivya. This adds to the quirky tonality of the film.
Vinayakan as Varma shines in front of the camera. We see his eyes flush with redness as if to remind us that he is flush with madness. One of the best villains in a Tamil movie in a long time.
Of course, one cannot not talk about Anirudh’s score. As Jammy Pants said in his review, “This is Anirudh’s era and we are living in it”.
What did not work for me was the twist. It was underwhelming and it felt like lazy writing. While it is perfectly possible that his son grew up hating the values that his strict, virtuous father tried to indoctrinate him in, it was never explicitly conveyed in the film. Since this backstory was not explored, his motivations for siding with Varma fell flat and baseless. It felt as if they kept a twist just for the sake of keeping a twist. But I did like that Nelson committed to killing his son off instead of having some melodramatic reconciliation just to appease the family audience.
Jailer is a film by a Thalaivar fan (with references to iconic Rajni characters like Baba, Baasha, and more) but it is not a Thalaivar film. It is, through and through, a Nelson film with Thalaivar in it.
Until the next review!