Jewel Thief, Phule: Reviews This Week

Jewel Thief: A Heist That Chokes On Its Own Excess

Jewel Thief could have been Ocean's Eleven , but sticks to being an unauthorised sequel of Race . I am not sure about anyone else, but Abbas-Mustan would not approve of this. Ishita Sengupta reviews.

Dir: Kookie Gulati, Robbie Grewal

Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Jaideep Ahlawat, Kunal Kapoor, Nikita Dutta

Streaming on: Netflix

JEWEL THIEF has an Abbas–Mustan–shaped hole in it. The specifics are difficult to convey, but the outcome is easy to see. Here are some pointers: there is no plot, only plot twists. Plot twists have twists, and the twists are twisted for more twists. All characters are uniformly smug, and each is afforded a minimum of five backstories. Everyone is outwitting everyone else, and by the time the second round of outwitting begins, logic takes a backseat and having pulpy fun is the goal.

If things were currently not this bleak, then dismissing such chaotic cinema would have been easy. But Hindi films are undergoing a severe creative crisis and harbouring nostalgia for mindless escapism, to the point of refashioning it, makes complete sense. I reckon this to be the starting point of Jewel Thief , which, although directed by Kookie Gulati and Robbie Grewal, has the idiocy of an Abbas–Mustan thriller and the aesthetic of a Siddharth Anand (also the producer) film. On paper, it is an alluring combination (imagine ten insane flashbacks and each scored to a banging score), but the film is not half as fun as it is primed to be; it is caught within the maze of outsmarting us and ends up choking on its own excess.

The premise is as old as time. A master thief is brought in by a wicked man to steal a world-famous jewel. Connecting them are globe-trotting locations, an elaborate heist, an unrelenting cop, and two men fighting over a mysterious woman. None of this is new, but there is ample scope to do something inventive with it, even if that includes basic imagination at the level of staging. Jewel Thief , which borrows its name from Vijay Anand’s 1967 film and executes a clumsy hat tip by using the filmmaker’s name as an alias in a fleeting scene, remains consistently dull and undermines the potential of the actors involved.

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Phule Is A Dull Biopic Of Two Revolutionary Social Reformists

Phule unfolds with the dullness of a history lesson, shrinking the expansiveness of their achievements to cherry-picked incidents and reducing the eventfulness of their lives to mere events.

Dir: Ananth Mahadevan

Cast: Pratik Gandhi, Patralekha

Playing in: Theatres

THE ONLY SHORTCOMING about great lives is that stories about them can be told only once. It is not so much the arc being familiar as it is the effect getting diffused. It is not so much the details being reiterated as the ingenuity of the biopic getting lost. This is a standing problem with Ananth Mahadevan’s Phule , a rare Hindi film about Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule. It had one chance to convey the incredible journey of the social reformists, and it squanders it.

On paper, it is an almost impossible task. Even a cursory research about both their lives will outline a scalding revolution that most Hindi films lately work overtime to generate from uninspiring stories. The heroism is so in-built in the narrative that it seeps even without a rousing background score and sweeping monologues. The commentary is so entrenched in the way they conducted themselves that it requires none of the crutches of embellishment that most biopics are prone to lean on.

Sample this: In pre-independent India, during the 1800s, Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule worked tirelessly against untouchability and caste discrimination, extending their work even to facilitate education for women. They started the first school for girls in Pune in 1848 and marched on despite facing enormous disparities from higher caste people. They led by example and were so progressive in their stance that, in hindsight, we all owe a collective debt to the husband-wife duo for shaping the thoughts of an entire nation even before it had assumed a specific identity.

— IS

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