He isn’t the only odd character around though. Justice Sunderlal Tripathi ( Saurabh Shukla) has undergone a bypass surgery, and he has to dance at his daughter’s wedding. Guess what? He practices his steps inside the court.
Time has hardened Pramod Mathur ( Annu Kapoor) , Jolly’s nemesis and a prolific lawyer in the city. He isn’t afraid of even fighting the judge - an interesting departure from the original where nobody dared to insult justice Tripathi at the Delhi high court.
Jolly could have avoided falling prey to such a system, but he has taken the onus of getting the justice delivered in a fake encounter case in which inspector Suryaveer Singh ( Kumud Mishra) is the prime accused.
Large chunks of the film remind the viewer of those legal satire shows where the judicial system looks like a big, dark joke. Mostly the joke is on Jolly, and sometimes it’s on us. We somehow know that there’s no escaping the wrath of overworked judges and a broken system. But Jolly needs to find loopholes in the system to keep his hopes afloat.
This is where the screenplay decides to do away with the fantastic research done by the film’s team. It starts to appear like a mix of many films. If the judge looks inspired from And Justice For All’s John Forsythe, Jolly himself seems to be taking a cue from Arshad Warsi’s much-loved act in the first film.
Also, the movie appears confused between a satire and a thriller. The most effective scenes are cut short to pave way for action scenes. This way the pace is maintained, but the theme is ignored.
It’s only in the second half that Jolly LLB 2 comes back to a prolonged courtroom battle and gives its actors a chance to rise and shine. Here, Annu Kapoor gives Akshay Kumar a solid run for his money. Over-emphasis on melodrama hampers a well thought-out central idea.