Where many thrillers programmatically crank up tension with every scene and every beat, Devashish Makhija’s third feature feels different; this manhunt is weighed down by an almost agonised oppressiveness. Joram’s protagonist Dasru (Manoj Bajpayee) is barely able to choose a course of action until compelled out of desperation, and his police pursuer Ratnakar (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) is not much better. There’s no escape in this pressure cooker from omnipresent societal exploitation and cynicism – with only Makhija’s compassion for the marginalised to compensate.
A tattooed member of the “scheduled tribes” from the eastern state of Jharkhand, Dasru lives in exile as a Mumbai labourer. When Phulo Karma (Smita Tambe), a tribal leader from the same region, pitches up on his construction site electioneering, she recognises him from his former life: a jungle rebel fighting against the appropriation of local lands by her husband’s iron-ore mining outfit. Dasru is bewildered when he comes home to find his wife Vaano (Tannishtha Chatterjee) brutally murdered and trussed upside down, forcing him to flee into the streets with his three-month-old daughter Joram in a sling.
