Jaane Jaan review: Kareena Kapoor, Jaideep Ahlawat and Vijay Varma star in Sujoy Ghosh’s latest murder mystery set in Kalimpong.
The benchmark that Sujoy Ghosh created for himself with the Vidya Balan-starrer Kahaani is tough to match. And it’s evident in most of his subsequent projects where he donned the director’s hat. With Jaane Jaan, the trailer raised high hopes, and things looked pretty exciting, but the film barely manages to live up to that hype or even come close to the intrigue quotient it set out to create.
Half way into Jaane Jaan, and I was convinced that even Ghosh knew this is not among his best works, but maybe he relied too much on the weight his actors — Kareena Kapoor Khan, Jaideep Ahlawat and Vijay Varma — hold, and he let them carry the entire film on their shoulders without bothering much about where the story is headed.
And if there’s anything that saves Jaane Jaan from sinking, it is the impeccable performances from this trio. Collectively, they offer a satisfying experience to moviegoers. If I had to just watch them perform without thinking about the what, why and how, Jaane Jaan would have been a perfect watch. But the film falters in more departments than one, and it’s hard to ignore. While I have little complains from Ghosh’s dedication as a director, Jaane Jaan definitely needed more pace, more depth and nuances for it to hit you hard, which it never does, barring maybe one scene about physical abuse.
An official adaptation of the 2005 Japanese novel The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino, the thriller has all the elements you’d expect to see in the said genre, but the treatment they get, and the unfolding of events looks just so disjointed. From the crime being committed, to the motive behind helping the culprit, it doesn’t take a lot to solve the mystery, which ends up being a mere showcase of some spectacular performances.
The story traces Maya D’Souza (Kareena Kapoor Khan) who moved to Kalimpong in West Bengal years ago with her daughter Tara (Naisha Khanna) and runs a cafe. On one fateful night, while she is trying to cover up the murder of her estranged husband Ajit Mhatre (Saurabh Sachdeva), she encounters her gifted but awkward neighbour, Naren aka Teacher (Jaideep Ahlawat), who readily comes on board to help her for motives best known to him. Soon, a crime investigation begins and relentless cop Karan Anand (Vijay Anand) arrives on scene, who must reach the bottom of this case and uncover the truth. Even though he has just one suspect in Maya, all evidences are in her favour, so no arrest can be made. How does Karan unravel the mystery? Does Maya manage to steer away from the crime investigation? Why was Teacher helping Maya? All these questions find answers over the course of nearly two hours.
The story that Ghosh has co-written with Raj Vasant generates a decent amount of curiosity to begin with, and it builds nicely as it pans out, but soon, it goes downhill and loses focus. Despite so much unfolding on screen, including some gory details, somehow, you never feel that adrenaline rush a murder mystery or a thriller of this scale and with such a stellar cast, is expected to offer. Also, Jaane Jaan falls victim to way too many giveaways during the course of its screenplay. For instance, one of the flashback sequences early on in the script tells me one of the big reveals, which could have been saved for the climax. There are some very convenient coincidences that appear to only exist for the sake of it, and they never really drive the narrative.