Satyameva Jayate Review - Scorching The Senses

Satyameva Jayate takes place through many stages. First, it starts off as a grotesque thriller with 90s dialgouebaazi. Then it metamorphoses into unintentional comedy, which is the best part of the film. And then, it culminates in an incoherent mess, hinging on the absurd. The film stars John Abraham as Vir, a painter by day and an avenging angel by night. He burns corrupts police officers alive when he sees them abusing their power. Closely following him is DCP Shivansh Rathod (Manoj Bajpayee), a cop that solves acrostic puzzles like it’s nobody’s business, but is easily fooled by a thane joke. His main motivation is to catch this unhinged psychopath.

Meanwhile, Vir keeps burning cops like they’re going out of fashion. From the beginning frame till the literal last, people are burning left, right and centre. This is one of those foolishly dangerous films, that worked in moderation in the 90s, but seem irresponsible and rash to tout to today’s version of the angry young man. Vigilante justice is a problematic issue today and watching John, with his biceps being bigger than my face, meat out justice is just troublesome, if not flat out nauseating. Coupled with cinematographer Nigam Bomzan’s camerawork which just moves around in circles, dizzying the audiences, the violence is repulsive.

Especially a scene set around Muharram, where Vir flagellates himself. John’s chiseled body is covered by this thick layer of viscous blood. We have to endure as Vir literally decimates a man, pummelling him with his larger-than-life fists. In fact, he beats his stomach so many times that I think if you took out all the times John beats anybody in this film, Satyameva Jayate wouldn’t be longer than 30 minutes. The director, Milap Milan Zaveri, known for directing one of Hindi cinema’s worst contributions to the world, Mastizaade, is imbalanced. At least in Mastizaade, Sunny Leone’s assets were hard to look away from even as the film around her crumbled in misogyny.

Here, there is just so much blood and violence. There’s not a single scene that won’t make you queasy, especially when actors recite lines such as, “Bechara toast khaane se pehle hi toast ban gaye.” Milap’s trademark dialogue is here to stay, but it’s hard to take a ‘corrupt’ police officer seriously when he tells a slum-dweller whose wife has been killed in a hit and run, “Kachre ko insaaf nahi milta. Kachre ko saaf kara jaata hai.” There is nothing redeemable in the dialogues or even the slim narrative that Milap tries to sell. Yes, Satyameva Jayate makes Mastizaade and Kya Kool Hain Hum 3 look like The Shawshank Redemption in comparison.

Which makes it even harder to believe that actors with the likes of Manoj Bajpayee would agree to say lines like, “Rokunga bhi, thokuna bhi.” I’d like to believe that Manoj, who’s acted in films like Aligarh, was held at gunpoint to accept a script as boneheaded, dead and repulsive as this. Actually, Manoj is the only redeemable factor. His acting is abysmal, but DCP Shivansh does inject welcome humour into the narrative. When he sees an acrostic poem his daughter his written for him, he comes to the conclusion that Vir, the masked vigilante, is killing people at locations that start with specific letters to spell out Satyameva Jayate. It started with Santacruz, then went to Andheri and then the aforementioned Thane wordplay. Now DCP Shivansh must find a cop in another Mumbai suburb who is hideously corrupt. These cops are the worst of the worst. They’re Islamophobic, racist, sexist. You name it, these potbellied Mumbaikers have done it. So, the hilariously incompetent DCP Shivansh and his posse run around the metropolis like headless chickens. It’s absolutely bizarre and not for one moment, do you buy into Milap’s amplified world where he propagates vigilante justice, a dangerous element that this film glorifies in each and every one of its scenes.

Irrespective of what kind of cinematic treat/curse this is, Satyameva Jayate’s intentions lie in such a dark place, that it’s hard to believe that its producers would pay good money, not only for such a harebrained script to be made, but also to promote this problematic theme that plagues much of this awful film. Satyameva Jayate will leave you bloodless and cheerless. There’s not one redeeming quality in it. There’s no acting from John or Manoj, or even newbie Aisha Sharma, playing Shikha.

In the twenty minute climax, Shikha is just lying on the floor, lifeless. There’s a metaphor somewhere here that Vir and Shivansh are the same person - one liberated by the law and one shackled by it. I’d like to believe the makers of this terrible cinematic piece are far too boneheaded to have thought of it.

I hope Milap backs another sex comedy. The only thing burning up will be Tusshar Kapoor, ogling at women. Yes, it’ll be misogynistic but it won’t nauseate you. This is bloodless cinema.