Banner: White Feather Films & Viiking Media & Entertaiment
Producer: Sanjay Gupta, Aishwarya Rai, Anuradha Gupta, Nittin Keni, Akash Chawla, Sachin R. Joshi & Raina Sachin R. Joshi
Director: Sanjay Gupta
Cast: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Irrfan Khan, Shabana Azmi, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Jackie Shroff, Atul Kulkarni, Siddhanth Kapoor, Priya Banerjee, Sara Arjun, Abhimanyu Singh et al
Music: Amjad – Nadeem Arko, Pravo Mukherjee & Amar Mohile
Distribution: Essel Vision Productions
Director Sanjay Gupta is more famous for his thriller movies genre in the past. And once again he has delivered the goods in his latest offering ‘Jazbaa’ albeit this time he has laced the movie with a bit of emotionalism too, probably to tug at the viewer’s heart strings too.
The intricatly plotted scenerio of ‘Jazbaa’ kicks off with Anuradha Verma (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), a prominent criminal lawyer and a single mother who has never lost a case. One day her daughter Sanaya (Sara Arjun) is kidnapped and no ransom is demanded, but instead the kidnapper contacts her and tells her that she has to defend a convicted felon to get her daughter back. The felon is Miyaaz Shaikh (Chandan Roy Sanyal) who is convicted for rape & murder of a young woman and the case against him is set for judgement in 4 days. The kidnapper keeps track of Anuradha very closely to make sure she complies with his demand. With the pressure of time against her, Anuradha tries to get help from her suspended police friend Yohan (Irrfan Khan) who has been suspended from the police force for flaunting the rules & the regulations too often. The case against Miyaaz Shaikh is handled by a renowned public prosecutor (Atul Kulkarni) who has been defeated by Anuradha time & again and hence has a long time professional rivalry against her.
Director Sanjay Gupta has officially made ‘Jazbaa’ as the indianised version of the Korean movie ‘Seven Days’ packing in all the edge – of – the – seat punches topped with his par excellence directional skills. In fact the movie ‘Jazbaa’ sounds almost like a perfectly crafted slick Hollywood thriller, yet the film lacks in its repeat value deviod of any mass entertainment value. The film also proves weak in its proper romanticism depiction & musical treatment barring the first rate backgrond score of Amar Mohile. That apart his other behind – the – scenes technicians have also given a first rate account of their unsurpassed talent perfectly living upto his directorial expectations and that includes each & every bit role playing actors too. A word of extreme praise also goes to all the producers backing the project and of course last but not the least to Nittin Keni too for his distributional vision through his Essel Vision Company.
Performance wise the film ‘Jazbaa’ clearly belongs to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as her overtly perfect comback launch pad after 5 long years. She delivers a towering performance despite the towering presence of a superbly talented performer like Irrfan Khan. But sadly speaking this time around Irrfan Khan could not stand tall with his volcano of talent with his half the time dopey act, against an equally talented performer like Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Yet all said & done the duo has perfecty matched their talent in a few scenes at least. And for that the entire credit goes to director Sanjay Gupta for capturing & extracting a raw & stunning performance from the duo. Next in line the veteran actress Shabana Azmi, on the other hand, comes up with yet another sterling performance. The remaining actors like Jackie Shroff, Priya Banerjee, Siddhant Kapoor, Chandan Roy Sanyal & Atul Kulkarni too have excelled beyond imagination in their respectively brief cameo roles.
Tail Piece: ‘Jabaa’ is a captivating thriller with good performances that makes it a decent watch for the entire family audiences.