Director Vasan Bala has a knack for capturing the way some humans view others as disposable, as lives to spend for power. In Bala’s new Hindi-language production Jigra, a jailbreak film that frequently alludes to earlier, better Bollywood thrillers, Satya (a luminous Alia Bhatt), has learned from the best; after witnessing her father’s suicide she is raised by powerful relatives, and works as a fixer in one of their luxury hotels where she handles any inconveniences, human or otherwise.
Satya’s sole loyalty is to her younger, less savvy brother Ankur (Vedang Raina); whose attempts to raise money for a tech start-up with his reckless, far richer cousin Kabir (Aditya Nanda) go from bacchanalia to drug bust. Kabir and his family summarily frame Ankur; he is sentenced to sentenced to death by electrocution in Hanshi Dao, a fictional East Asian island nation inspired by Malaysia and Singapore’s draconian drug policies.
