Review: Kareena’s OTT Debut “Jaane Jaan”

Cast : Kareena Kapoor Khan, Jaideep Ahlawat, Vijay Varma and others.
Director: Sujoy Ghosh
Producers: Shobha Kapoor, Ekta Kapoor
Release: Sept 22, 2023
Streaming On: Netflix

After enjoying an illustrious career for nearly 24 years as a star heroine on the silver screen, finally Kareena Kapoor Khan is making her OTT debut through the web film “Jaane Jaan”. An adaptation of the Japanese novel “The Devotion of Suspect X,” written by Keigo Higashin, which has already been made into a successful Korean film “Perfect Number” earlier, the same original producer teamed up with Balaji Films to bring out this one. But this film is unofficially made with Vijay Antony as the lead in Tamil, which is titled Kolaigaran. As the Bollywood movie is directed by Kahani fame Sujoy Ghosh, the expectations around it shot up. Let’s see what the film is like.

Synopsis:

Single mother Maya D’Souza (Kareena Kapoor) lives in the mountain town of Kalimpong with her teen daughter Tara. Her neighbour happens to be Naroo aka Narena Vyas (Jaideep Ahlawat), a genius mathematics teacher who stops committing suicide after Maya knocks on his door. Later, Maya’s estranged husband Ajit (Saurabh Sachdeva) comes home to snatch away their daughter, and Maya kills him. Naroo now helps her hide the body and what happens when his college friend, police officer Karan Anand (Vijay Varma) lands there to investigate the case. The rest of the travel is all about misleading Karan at the stroke of Naroo’s genius, and then Maya playing to the design such that she won’t get arrested.

Performances:

With this one being Kareena Kapoor’s OTT debut, surely everyone expects her to give a knockout performance but frankly speaking, the character is just a routine one. While the actress scored well in some scenes, somewhere her de-glam look wasn’t so convincing. For audiences who are accustomed to watching her glam treats, this role won’t be impressive and also her looks remind us of Kate Winslet from the TV series “Mare of East Town”.

Jaideep Ahlwat of “Pataal Lok” web series fame is however the show-stealer in this film that entirely banks on his subtle yet compelling acting chops that breathes a lot of suspense into the film. He is phenomenal in some scenes where he appears as a one-side lover, and in some plot-turning sequences where he appears as little psychotic being a brilliant thinker

Vijay Varma is a radiant talent and though he’s not used to the fullest potential, surely his presence brought a lot of attention to the film’s suspenseful narrative and intriguing nature. More than a Kareena, it is Vijay and Jaideep’s romance like camaraderie that actually lights up the TV screens. Especially for those who love to watch Vijay in some positive roles, this film gives a certain relief.

Technical Aspects:

The backdrop of Kampoling (a foothill town in West Bengal) is the most intriguing part of Jaane Jaan and director Sujoy Ghosh never leaves his Bengali roots to get such setups supporting his narratives. At the same time, the burnt-out orange-teal colour palette gave a proper mood to the film, which is aptly supported by the terrific cinematography of Avik Mukhopadhyay.

The next important pillar of Jaane Jaan is the sound design and the music scored by Sachin-Jigar (songs) and Shor Police (BGM). Many times when the film is boring, the music uplifts the boredom. At the same time, the terrific sound design gave us lots of shocking experiences as we watched the film. The quality of the sound is going to stay in our ears for years.

Thumbs Up:

Jaideep Ahlawat’s fine performance
Suspense factor at times

Thumbs Down:

Unsatisfying climax
Poor character arcs
Known story

Analysis:

Well, The Devotion of Suspect X is a novel whose 4-5 film adaptions are the ones that actually inspired “Drishyam” movie. While Drishyam is an unofficial copy of those films, watching Jaane Jaan gives a Deja Vu feeling that Jaane Jaan is a copied version of Drishyam. That’s the biggest drawback because Drishyam is a superhit in Malayalam, Telugu and Hindi as well with each having its own casting.

At one point, the film sounds like a badly cooked drama in the first half because one can’t fail to ask oneself, why would a Mathematical genius work as a teacher in a school that too in a hill station. While the setup around Jaideep reminds us of Russel Crowe from ‘A Beautiful Mind’, his brilliant acting is not backed by enough backstories and in-depth narratives. Similarly, the case of Kareena escaping from the Kolkata dance bar 16 years ago is an old plot, and the flashback flashes are not even exciting. Concealing the truth and diverting the police is another tried-tested story in Indian cinema, and that’s where Jaane Jaan falls flat again.

While the presence of Kareena Kapoor, Jaideep and Vijay Varma steers you to watch the film till the end, the biggest shocker is the climax where Jaideep turns an approver with a twist. This is quite confusing and whatever good feeling we have until that point, gets washed away giving feelers like we wasted our time all the while. With a runtime of 2 hours 15 minutes, the film gets boring at times, as the sine graph of the movie always remained flat. None would expect this passable fare from a director like Sujoy Ghosh, and his presence remains a minus for the movie.

To wind up, Jaane Jaan is another Drishyam-like flick that won’t offer anything new to treat your senses but showcases a similar kind of story through the finest performances of two male leads. For Kareena, this lady-Drishyam won’t be a talked about debut on the OTT as other actresses out there are doing a far better job by picking up far better scripts.

Bottom Line – Jaane Jaan! Nah, Jaane Dho!