The most memorable character in Prakash Jha’s follow-up to his police drama Gangaajal is played by Prakash Jha. Jai Gangaajal stars Priyanka Chopra as the supposed lead, but as events prove, the movie’s real hero is Jha’s corrupt police officer, who has a change of heart and sets out to fix what he helped destroy.
The real hero
But this 148-minute saga is not about Abha Mathur’s clean-up of the rot that infects Lakhisarai. Rather, it’s about the turning of the worm. All it takes is a short lecture by Abha for BN Singh’s conscience to twitch, and the crooked cop decides to go straight. T A body swings from the tree, one of the first of many hangings in this UA-rated movie, and BN Singh is a man transformed.
Jai Gangaajal badly wants to shake its intended viewers out of their popcorn-induced stupor, and one of the weapons it employs is the deafening background score: the action sequences are accompanied by rousing songs bemoaning the lousy state of affairs. Jha shoots over Chopra’s shoulder in valourising his character, who has the best-written emotional arc and the strongest scenes. The director, who has also written the screenplay, has a deep understanding of how things work in these badlands, and he is not blind to the difficulties of trying to fix what is badly broken. But BN Singh’s solutions are ultimately no different – and certainly less watchable – than the average vigilante flick. Singh ultimately emerges as a more serious and sorrowful Chulbul Pandey, and all Jai Gangaajal needed was a shirt-baring moment to complete the fantasy of justice delivered off the books and in slow motion.