MOVIE REVIEW
movie review :
flying jatt
I
t is very hard to fathom the purpose of this aimless
flight. If the idea behind A Flying Jatt is to unveil a new
money-spinning franchise, we don't know about the
money bit but it would be a moviegoer's worst nightmare
come true. Isn't one bad enough? A few more such flicks
would be cinematic hell. Poorly mounted, abysmally acted and dreadfully tedious, A Flying Jatt, directed and cowritten by choreographer Remo D'Souza, flies on empty.
Its ideas and themes are ripped off from sundry sources
and cobbled together in a scrappy, sloppy comic-strip
fantasy that is about as steady as an eel on a slippery
slope. A Flying Jatt is so whimsically infantile in its conception of a homegrown Superman-like crime-buster
that it never gains any height. Even for those that are
suckers for superhero actioners, the film lacks the punch
required to pass muster. So where is this Jatt flying? De-
void of magic and mystery, the film takes all of two-anda-half hours to deliver a grand anti-pollution message:
everything has an alternative, but not Mother Earth.
True, there is no alternative for good sense. When will
Bollywood stop foisting such glossily-packaged garbage
bags upon us? Yes, A Flying Jatt, anchored by a glassy
Tiger Shroff whose acting skills are still pretty rudimentary, delivers a truckload of trash that inevitably stinks
to high heaven. Flying on a wing and a prayer, this film
about a young Jatt in a rut is a yawn-inducing exercise
that only gets worse with every passing frame, each as
fatuous as the previous one. It is a tree in the middle
of a water body that triggers all the mayhem. It bears a
divine sign on which much irrational mumbo-jumbo is
centered. An industrialist (Kay Kay Menon) desperately
needs the land in order to build a bridge to serve his
polluting factory by the lake. The Patiala peg-swigging
mother (Amrita Singh) of a blundering martial arts teacher Aman (Tiger Shroff), speaking for all the residents of
Kartar Singh Colony, refuses to part with the patch no
matter what. The angry entrepreneur unleashes a man
mountain called Raka (WWE fighter Nathan Jones) to
browbeat the lady's son into submission. To begin with,
this lad is diffidence personified. He is afraid of heights,
is bullied by his students, and is the butt of ridicule for his
colleagues.His mom keeps reminding him that his dear
departed father was the first sardar in history to learn
kung-fu at the feet of a Shaolin master. So swift were the
late patriarch's moves that the Chinese gave him the title
Flying Jatt. Sounds Greek? It is. To return to the story, in
a violent confrontation, as the mamma's boy is pinned to
the aforementioned tree by the murderous Raka and is
on the brink of being reduced to pulp, providence intervenes. The young man turns into an invincible force. He
can now fly and beat the shit out of wrongdoers. What's
more, no bullet nor dagger can harm him anymore. Her
entreaties to the Lord answered, his mother breaks into
a dance of joy. "Superhero ban gaya," she chants. She
even stitches a garish costume for her son to go with his
new-found saviour-of-the-meek status. The rest of the
film is anything but super. Subjected to lightning strikes,
Raka ends up in a dump of toxic industrial waste. He
lies there for so long that, when he emerges from the
mess, he becomes the very embodiment of all that is
ugly in the air that we breathe. The mighty arch-villain's
blood turns black and he spews dark fumes through his
mouth and nostrils. The lowbrow comic-strip spirit of A
Flying Jatt extends to the film's rough-hewn production
design. Nothing that appears on the screen, neither the
houses nor the props, looks real. The home in which the
protagonist and his mom live, as well as those around
it, resemble cardboard structures. The CGI-laden office
of the evil industrialist looks straight out of a futuristic
fantasy.Jacqueline Fernandez signals all that is wrong
with this film. Playing Kirti, a schoolteacher who does
anything but teach, she is the hero's romantic interest
and song-and-dance partner. The smitten girl act that
Jacqueline is called upon to perform is hopelessly over
the top, but it is well in keeping with the rest of the film,
which, as it title warns, never has its feet on the ground.
In a prelude to a musical set piece, the superhero asks
his besotted lady love: "Do you trust me?" She nods.
And, lo and behold, he picks her up and takes her on a
ride through nothingness, singing and dancing in midair. Elsewhere in A Flying Jatt, the thwarted and frustrated entrepreneur demands to know from his hatchet
man where he should funnel the effluents that his factory
produces. "Where," he thunders, "do I dump my waste?"
Not here please, Mr. D'Souza.
28 | BOOM