Shubhra Gupta

An intensive search-and-combing operation which results in the capture of a dreaded terrorist in Srinagar could be the one-line theme of several similar films in the past. The difference with ‘Ground Zero’, which calls itself a ‘work of fiction based on real-life events’, are two-fold. First, it releases the same week of the Pahalgam tragedy, whose consequences will be felt for a long time to come. Second, it steers clear of the disturbing jingoism that has been part and parcel of such films, focussing instead on the tough life of the BSF jawans and other security forces in the conflict-stricken Kashmir valley Emran Hashmi plays BSF officer Narendra Nath Dhar Dubey, who managed to locate and take out terrorist kingpin Ghazi Baba and his accomplices in 2003. It was a time when PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee had visited the valley, in the midst of rising terrorist activities: there are glimpses of the 2001 attack on Parliament in the film.

Can a film featuring Saif Ali Khan and Jaideep Ahlawat and a diamond bigger than the Ritz turn out to be a shockingly banal bauble?That’s not a trick question. It is something I’ve been asking myself since I finished watching ‘Jewel Thief A Heist Begins’, a face-off between a too-cool-for-school jewel thief (Saif Ali Khan), and a nattily-turned out mobster (Jaideep Ahlawat) who has a thing for pulping humans with his bare hands. Given that heist films are a dime a dozen, the least one can expect when you’ve got these two leads, fully capable of generating fizz, is to give us flash and pizazz and non-stop thrills, because that’s what the best high-stakes, high-on-adrenaline ‘heere-ki-chori’ films are about.

In the 19th century Maharashtra, Jyoti Rao Phule and his wife Savitri Bai lit the flame of female education and all-round empowerment at a time when girls were married off when they were barely more than children, forced to bear and rear their own children for the rest of their lives. In an early scene, we see little Savitri learn how to read with the help of the much-older Jyotiba, and how that changed her, and made her aware of her world. The release of this bio-pic, whose opening credits claim that it is based on detailed research, was delayed because of ruffled Brahmin feathers, but nothing in it feels like a figment of the filmmakers’ imagination. It feels like an accurate if sanitised representation of social realities of that time, during which the British were playing their own crafty games of keeping the ‘natives’ in check, by using the rampant caste discrimination to keep dividng and ruling while holding out the carrot of conversion to Christianity.

Logout is one more addition in the recent spate of shows and films unpacking the dangers of online excess: it certainly looks like that subject is here to stay, because the addiction-adrenaline-endorphin-glut doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Pratyush Dua, aka Pratman (Babil Khan) is an ‘influencer’ with a follower count inching close to the magic figure of ten million. His closest rival is a pretty girl whose chief constituency is ‘single desperate ladke’, whose one ‘emo reel’ threatens to beat Pratman, not just in terms of numbers, which is bad enough, but juicy deals, which is worse.

The choice of a working women’s hostel as the site of dread in this psychological horror show is a smart one: young women streaming in from small towns for jobs and freedom bring with them their histories, and when those unaddressed traumas and personal demons are unleashed, anything can happen. There’s power in ‘Khauf’s premise, and the initial episodes get busy introducing us to the characters we will meet in the eight-part series. Gwalior girl Madhu’s (Monika Panwar) arrival on the same floor on which live a handful of petrified women (Priyanka Setia, Chum Darang, Riya Shukla, Suchi Malhotra) serves as a catalyst for forward movement.

More than a hundred years after it occurred, the April 1919 massacre of Jallianwala Bagh is a wound that continues to fester. There has been no contestation about what happened that terrible day when General Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to fire upon scores of unarmed innocents, many of them women and children, without a single warning. The people of Amritsar who had gathered there to protest against the Rowlatt Act had no inkling that a spotter plane had been deployed to ascertain their numbers: shortly afterwards it flew overhead, shoot-to-kill orders were barked, and ground was filled with the bodies of the dead and dying.

The question really is: Is the ‘dhai kilo ka haath’ still potent enough? And the answer to that, in this ultra-long, ultra-violent rant against India’s enemies, is a resounding yes. Sunny still has it. That is the end towards which the star lends his considerable heft, scything through endless rows of ‘gaddars’ and goons, who come at him pretty much though the entire nearly 160-minute duration of Jaat, so that he can smack ‘em down. Brigadier Baldev Pratap Singh aka Bulldozer uses all manner of weapons, from sophisticated bazookas with bullets long enough as his arms, to swords, sickles, and, when push comes to mighty shove, his bare hands, to keep them at bay, working his way to the chief antagonist Rana Thunga (Randeep Hooda) and the latter’s equally blood-thirsty brother (Vineet Kumar Singh). The only thing missing is the handpump.

The challenge is real. In almost every frame and sequence of this Eid release, Salman Khan aka Sanjay, the Raja of Rajkot, aka Sikandar, struggles to be present. You can see him go through the motions of emotion and action, delivering dialogue, dancing, romancing, shedding tears –yes, he’s man enough to cry– but nowhere do you see traces of the one and only Bhai, who has never pretended to be anything other than who he has been in the last thirty years– the star with his very specific style-and-swag– the blue bracelet and the bulked-up arms-and-torso akimbo adorning his favourite avatars of the loveable rascal-cum-the desi Robin Hood with the golden heart.