Chasing January’s crowdpleasing comeback Pathaan, here’s further confirmation of Shah Rukh Khan’s status as reigning, benevolent King of Bollywood. Where his earlier film expounded on established formula, Khan’s latest stretches its arms wider and demonstrates flickers of idiosyncratic vision. It is properly pan-Indian: the emergent Tamil action stylist Atlee imports South Indian cinema’s characteristic rowdiness and social conscience, alerting the mass audience to pressing regional concerns – before apparently losing control over his material. A star vehicle that functions like a runaway train, Jawan covers a lot of ground in surprising fashion at full throttle – but that’s also a polite way of admitting it’s utterly all over the place.
Its surest organising principle is its lead actor, shuffling knowingly and wittily through a range of personas. From his opening line (“who am I?”), Khan draws us into wondering what relation the bandaged warrior liberating a village in a prologue has to the gruff baldie laying siege to Mumbai’s metro, and the prison warden clinging to a second chance at love. A one-man Cloud Atlas, Jawan is a puzzle movie where the star proves the puzzle; it’s a great showcase for Khan to play everything under the sun: godly badass, dandyish army vet, total sweetheart with a prospective stepdaughter. There’s ego involved, undeniably, but few stars in any cinema could model such radically diverse hats with this much flair.
