It is never be easy for a serious-minded courtroom satire
that swivels around the grim reality of fake encounters to stick to a style
steeped in wit and breezy humour without occasionally wobbling off its axis.
Jolly LLB 2, caught in a cramped channel between gravitas and jest, does
sometimes teeter dangerously close to straying on to shaky ground. But thanks
to the politics that underlines writer-director Subhash Kapoor's flashier
follow-up to his 2013 sleeper hit.
Jolly LLB 2 is a film that makes important
and relevant points about distorted law enforcement and justice delivery in a
democracy of dis-empowered and oppressed constituents. While the playbook that
Kapoor employs here is largely the same as the one he used in the inaugural
entry, the key personnel on board this time around, barring the notable
exception of the fabulous-as-ever Saurabh Shukla, are a new lot .If only the
film wasn't stretched so thin.
Its middle portions might have been far less
dreary. Its length sucks life and breath out of the film, rendering the scenes
leading up to the climax rather limp. Matters are worsened by an underwhelming,
tacked-on denouement. The first time around, the director was driven purely by
a spirit of creative independence. Jolly LLB 2, a 'bigger' production, plays
more by rules that are skewed towards the needs of a mainstream audience. the
film sheds its commercial underdog tag. In the bargain, it also loses out on
some of the charming spontaneity that Warsi's natural comic flair had lent the
legal drama. Although many of the scenes in this film, especially the
protracted ones in the courtroom, are scripted and staged very differently from
how they were in Jolly LLB,
Akshay Kumar, to his credit, never loses sight of
the need for restraint. Playing a callow but cocksure lawyer not averse to
bending the rules when he is in need of money, he aspires to free himself from
the clutches of a legal eagle (Ram Gopal Bajaj) who uses him as an errand boy.
Reminded that a lawyer without a chamber is like a politician without a seat of
power and an actor without a super hit, Jolly resolves to acquire an office of
his own.
Desperate for cash to buy his dream chamber, Jolly takes a young,
pregnant widow (Sayani Gupta) for a ride. The repercussions of that careless
act are so grave and he is sucked into an unequal battle against the city's
most dreaded lawyer Pramod Mathur (Annu Kapoor). It turns into an all-out fight
to secure justice for a man wrongly accused of terrorism and slain in a fake
encounter. Up against a group of cynical cops and a legal system vulnerable to
manipulation, Jolly has to summon up all his courage and wiles to find his
around the daunting maze. Saurabh Shukla is an absolute delight yet again in
the role of the mercurial Justice Sunder Lal Tripathi.
He conveys avuncular
grace with as much ease as he does indignant exasperation. No matter what, his
antics are rib-tickling. Annu Kapoor strikes false notes occasionally,
succumbing to the temptation of playing to the gallery. But Akshay Kumar holds
himself back for the most part, enhancing the impact of his performance in the
bargain. The lead actor receives solid support from Rajiv Gupta as Jolly's
assistant Bribal and Kumud Mishra as the ambitious, cynical police inspector
who will stop at nothing for a promotion. Sayani Gupta has only four-and-a-half
scenes to make her presence felt. She does. And how! Unfortunately, Huma
Qureshi's character is hopelessly under-developed.
The screenplay does not tap
the full potential of either the actress or the role she plays. Certain
underlying elements give Jolly LLB 2 an intriguing spin. For one, it presents a
crusader who is completely believable, warts and all. Jolly does speak of, and
even demonstrate, his physical prowess once or twice, but it is his tough
cookie wife (Huma Qureshi) who has to jump to his rescue when he is shot at by
two assailants in a marketplace. What's more, Jolly cooks for his wife and
makes arrangements for her when she is in the mood for a drinking binge. He
obviously isn't the kind of hero we usually run into in Hindi films.
Jolly LLB
also, tangentially, brings into its purview the vexed theme of young Muslim men
falsely implicated in cases of terrorism and not given a chance in hell by a
police and a media all too eager to brand and hang them. The film also slips in
allusions to the "anti-national" versus "patriotic" debate
that dominates the political discourse in the country today even as it
emphasizes the centrality of a free and fair judicial system in a polity controlled
by the wealthy and the powerful. If all this sounds too solemn for a mass
entertainer, do not be put off. Jolly LLB 2 does well not to take itself too
seriously. It has the feel of a good-natures banter between friends rather than
that of an inflated inquest conducted from a pedestal.
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