Wish John Was On a Gym Poster Instead of in ‘Satyamev Jayate’!

Camera: Athar Rather
Editor: Kunal Mehra
Producer: Chandni Sharma

“Satyamev Jayate” literally translates to “truth alone triumphs” and I'm going to make sure that happens too.

Now the truth is, we don’t know what to do with John Abraham. He looks great on screen, has a disarming dimpled smile, is convincing as he makes keema out of his opponents and he tries hard, but still, when it comes to contorting his face to reveal some kind of emotion, he looks more at home on a Gold’s gym poster!

Be it Force 2, Rocky Handsome, Dhishoom – John Abraham can simply sleepwalk his way thorough them all and no one would notice. I doubt if he would notice either.

In this one, John Abraham aka Veer wields the paint brush and machis ki teeli with equal finesse! This angry painter can’t stand corruption – no, actually, make that corrupt cops. He spares netas and businessmen and everyone else but goes after police officers with abysmal track records.

Veer gets rid of them jaldi jaldi until Manoj Bajpai is summoned to teach him a lesson.

“Kanoon haath mein mat lo (don’t take the law into your own hands)” ACP Shivansh tells him over the phone . “Kanoon ko insaaf ke hawale karunga (I’ll make sure justice is done),” Veer responds. This dialogue baazi keeps getting better till it becomes bizarre!

Here are some more – “Petrol ke daam, and Daamle (name of the cop he kills) dono upar jaayenge” . “Note badle niyat nahi. Patil ho ya Qadri sabki ek biradri (You changed notes, but not people’s motives. Whether Patil or Qadri, all are the same” . And my fave – “tu iss janam mein jalega lekin dard agle janam tak hoga (I will torch you in this life, but you’ll feel the heat into your next” . Somewhere in between all this Nora Fatehi also does a belly dance.

At this point I am reminded of a specific dialogue by Ganesh Gaitonde in Sacred Games: “Kabhi kabhi lagta hain sala apun hi bhagwan hai (Sometimes I feel like I myself am God)” .

That’s exactly how this reviewer felt watching the film too. I felt as if I had this supernatural power through which I already knew every impending bend and curve in the plot. But that is just because we have seen it all already, hundreds of times, played out in exactly the same fashion!

Writer director Milap Milan Zaveri has included a lot of violence and gore and blood, which earned this film an A certificate.

There is, of course, Manoj Bajpai who refuses to give up on a doomed project that has little regard for his tremendous talent. There is even the newcomer Aisha Sharma who, if cropped out of the on-screen proceedings, would not make an iota of difference to the end result.

1 .5 Quints out of 5