Jigra Review: The Alia Bhatt-starrer Doesn’t Fire but Fizzle Out

The trailer of Jigra promised a coup too delicious to resist: Alia Bhatt as the Angry Young (Wo)man. At one point, Manoj Pahwa tells her, “Arre, [Amitabh] Bachchan nahin banna hai. Bach ke nikalna hai.” A stone-faced Bhatt replies: “Ab toh Bachchan hi banna hai.” This exchange hides loaded meanings: reverence (Bhatt, the best Bollywood actor right now, paying tribute to the best Bollywood actor of the ’70s), inversion (a heroine playing an anti-hero), and nostalgia (a drug always in short supply). There’s a bit of serendipity, too: the movie’s release date, October 11, coincides with Bachchan’s birthday.

The similarities between Zanjeer (1973) and Jigra—and a sincere yearning for old Bollywood—start from the start. Like Vijay in Zanjeer, Satya (Bhatt) sees her father die. As a kid, she tells her brother, Ankur, that she’ll protect him from his bullies: “Amrish, Jeevan, Ranjeet”—the names of the iconic Bollywood baddies. While spinning a top with her friends, she channels Mithun da: “Koi shaq?”

Satya and Ankur (Vedang Raina) grow up in their uncle’s house—a protection that functions as a transaction. Satya is, in essence, the head of the household staff and when their cousin, Kabir (Aditya Nanda), gets caught with drugs in a fictional South Asian country, Hanshi Dao, the family lawyer brainwashes Ankur to take the blame. He does and finds out the punishment: death by electrocution. Burning with rage, Satya lands in the country: to save her brother, to kick some ass, to make revenge look like casual breakfast.

Even though the set-up takes longer than usual in this 155-minute film, Jigra still blazes with possibilities. Its director, Vasan Bala, has a genuine love for Bollywood and world cinema, amply evident in his Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota (2018) and Monica, O My Darling (2022). So even if the story seems straight-forward and the climax not hard to guess, you wait for the concoction of Bhatt, Bala, and Bachchan.

The director’s cinephilia doesn’t disappoint. You get film references and meta winks aplenty: the name of the anti-hero (Satya); her accomplice Bhatia or “Tiger” (Pahwa), a stand-in for Sher Khan (Pran) from Zanjeer; the convicts in the Hanshi Dao jail (“John Woo, Kim Ki-duk, Wong Kar-wai”); Bhatia wearing a t-shirt that says “Urf Professor” (an unreleased comedy starring Pahwa); a plot like Gumrah (1993, financed by Jigra’s producer, Dharma Productions, and directed by Bhatt’s father, Mahesh); and on and on.

But the references should function as garnish—imagine dhaniya patta as the whole dish. That’s the main problem here. The charm of an anti-hero lies in her prime identity: anti-establishment. But there’s no such thing here, as this movie isn’t even set in India (or anywhere else). So when Satya asks Bhatia, “What law? What country?”—you want to repeat the same question, though not with anguish but disinterest. This lack of political bite, diminishing the central anger and the Bachchan hat-doff, could have been compensated by compelling characters, but that’s not the case, either.

Like the film, Satya holds promise: her inevitable transition from impassive to explosive makes you wait and hope. Unlike Bachchan, Bhatt is of course not tall and brawny. So what does aggression look like in such a person? Bala gives us an early memorable scene where, in the flight, Satya wolfs down a meal for an entire family, then pukes in the bathroom. But later, the bland writing, depriving her of arresting specificities, makes her inert. Such broad strokes mark and mar almost all characters: Ankur and his fellow inmates; the warden Hans Raj Landa (Vivek Gomber—an Inglourious Basterds reference); Satya’s collaborators, Muthu (Rahul Ravindran) and, to a lesser extent, Pahwa’s Bhatia, a rare performance that shows some spark.  

If the flat characters are one problem, then the lack of humour—or anything else producing tonal variation—is another. Jigra unfolds in a monotonous register, failing to spring surprise or bite. A masala fare like this, centred on an omnipotent hero, will hardly have a surprising end (which isn’t a deal-breaker), but its means should be. It’s not as if the movie doesn’t try—Ankur’s friends plan their own jailbreak, Satya and Muthu erupt into fistfights—but none of them land with any memorable power. The biggest misfire, though, has to be a lack of poignancy and complexity in Satya and Ankur’s bond, especially for siblings with shared traumas. Has their past transformed them as individuals? Has it changed their love? Has it sharpened her feelings of revenge? These questions never find specific and satisfying answers—except for Satya becoming his generic protector. In fact, Jigra imposes pathos through the background score and songs, only to end up looking more contrived and desperate.   

The thriller continues to drag in its final hour, becoming an exercise in baffling irony: the more it races towards the closure, the more it feels deprived of stakes, surprise, and sass. And when Jigra is cheeky in an earlier portion, that meta dig carries the sting and the fate of a boomerang. Consider, for instance, Muthu explaining the jail’s complicated blueprint to Satya and Bhatia. Finding it difficult to follow, the latter says, “Simplify it for me.” Muthu replies, “Masala movie thodi na bana rahe hain.” If only it were that easy to make masala films: the Angry Young Man was not just angry.