Leave logic at home, go for the Rajinism. Director Nelson Dileepkumar and the Superstar offer a film that may have gaping plot holes, but you wouldn’t really care. Jailer is an undiluted adrenaline rush for the diehard Rajini fan. The star brings his trademark larger-than-life mannerisms into Nelson’s quirky storytelling: a combination that works like a perfect charm.
The film opens with an idol smuggling ring that Muthuvel Pandian’s (Rajini) son Arjun (Vasanth Ravi), a dedicated cop, is trying to bring down until tragedy strikes. Rajini’s clash with the smuggling ring builds up to a heist thriller reminiscent of Nelson’s Sivakarthikeyan-starrer Doctor (2021), only Jailer manages to top it. The villains, with Malayalam actor Vinayakan in the lead, swing between cartoonishly ridiculous to manically bloodthirsty. Bullets, blood, and bodies fly. Rajini makes mass entry after mass entry. Anirudh’s music frequently spirals into frenzied guitar riffs and pounding percussion. The cameos of Mohanlal, Shiva Rajkumar, and Jackie Shroff will be immensely satisfying to their respective fans.
And yet, how is the heart of the film, Rajini, in the middle of all of this? Whatever thought went into balancing the actor’s usual on-screen antics with Nelson’s markedly different style in Tamil cinema, it’s worked.
Nelson starts us off by presenting Rajini as a fumbling pushover in the place of the star fans know and love, slowly turning up the heat quite Baashha-like, until the Superstar beneath emerges. While Muthuvel’s backstory is logically laughable and problematic, it’s the unabashedly extravagant delivery that sucks you into the swirling vortex of Nelson’s storytelling. Rajini inhabits the centre of this vortex with veteran ease.
Jailer is a like an ode to the many shifts the star’s career has seen. There is the morally grey Rajini of his debutant days from the 1970s, his meteoric rise to the title of Superstar with callbacks to characters like Alex Pandian (Moondru Mugam,1982), and the Rajini of the 1990s—the towering demi-god of Kollywood whose characters could do no wrong. From impossible grief to mass moments to comic sequences, the Superstar brings all of it together. It is also notable that Rajini pulls this off while, as a rarity in recent years, playing a character his age.
Speaking of which, the ‘90s generation who are looking forward to a Neelambarai-Padayappa-type reunion in Ramya Krishnan’s casting as Muthuvel’s wife, are going to be disappointed. The feud between the two in Padayappa (1999) has grown to legendary status over the decades. This was in no small part due to Ramya Krishnan’s acting. Despite being written from a misogynistic, male imagination of a woman with a mind of her own, the actor’s Neelambarai captured an entire generation’s imagination. From a feminist perspective, she remained until her end, submissive to no one. Certainly, not even to the man (Padayappa) she loved. It is this cinematic history that Jailer obviously relied on when the choice to cast Ramya Krishnan was made. Sadly, it is the continued misogyny of Kollywood that relegates her to a side character, with hardly any scope for an actor of her calibre. Similarly, Tamannaah’s cameo is of little consequence to the story.
In that vein, neither has the director’s predilection for homophobic and transphobic jokes been quelled despite the criticism he received for such scenes in Doctor. The film’s political undercurrent is chaotic as it is dubious.
Nelson also stays true to his obsession with big guns, explosions, mercenaries, and the armed forces/police, as we saw in his previous films including the Vijay-starrer Beast (2022). But unlike Beast, the director seems to have figured out how to weave in the format expected of big stars in Kollywood with his own brand of quirky humour, and a certain irreverence to formula movies.
Anirudh is clearly the music composer to go to for a lavish dose of theatrics in a film that’s already bursting at the seams with what millennials will describe as being “extra”. While such an approach can easily misfire, in Jailer, it comes together fluidly.
Is the film a bit silly too often? Yes. But is it also fun, full of cheer-worthy moments, and superbly entertaining? Also yes. This Rajini-Nelson double act is a resounding success.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the producers or any other members of its cast and crew.