Forty minutes into Satyameva Jayate, I gaped wide-eyed as John Abraham split open a truck tyre just by flexing his muscled arms. Where does that kind of strength come from? Could this actually be John’s definition of acting, letting his biceps do all the talking? That’s more likely, given that it’s just one-and-a-half expressions that we spy on his face during the 142-minute torture fest that Satyameva Jayate turns out to be.
Directed by Milap Milan Zaveri — attempting to shift gears here after churning out comedies like Grand Masti and Mastizaade — Satyameva Jayate is an assault on the senses. First, there is so much blood everywhere — splashed on streets and smeared on faces — that you may think you’ve slipped on red-tinged 3D glasses (okay, thank god, this film is not in 3D!)
Second, the background score by Sanjoy Chowdhury is tuned to the highest volume, and it’s just not music — there are shlokas chanted, drums beaten and a whole lot of screaming that goes like, ‘Jaala do usey, maar do usey’. And there’s Nora Fatehi somewhere in the middle moving her belly in all directions in Dilbar dilbar.
Recreating the over-the-top masala films of the ’80s and ’90s, Satyameva Jayate makes #Throwback seem like a bad word. The opening scene with John’s Vir — painter by day and vigilante by night — beating up a cop, pouring a can of ghee on him and setting him alive sets the tone for the rest of the film. The same modus operandi is carried out over the next few killings, with Vir targeting corrupt cops and sending them to their horrific death; when there are close-ups of burning flesh, the background music goes up a few notches. Taking on Vir is honest cop Shivansh Rathod (Manoj Bajpayee), who hams it up from the word go, maybe to match John in his style of acting.
The film plays out in loop — cops are burnt; Vir and Shivansh challenge each other on phone; Vir splits open a few more tyres; a couple of cars are blown up. In the middle of all this, Vir finds time to clean up the garbage on Juhu Beach, rescue wounded dogs and romance a veterinary doctor called Shikha (a wooden Aisha Sharma making her debut). The plot is childish, right down to the inane clues that Shivansh uses to crack the case, and even the Deewaar-like twist at interval point can’t rescue this joke of a film.
The unintentionally funny lines make it worse. Like “FIR ka jawaab F-I-R-E se de raha hai killer” or “Kachre ko insaaf nahin milta… kachra sirf saaf hota hai”. There’s even a reference to demonetisation (“Note badla niyat nahin”) and a passing mention of “achhe din”. And given the number of times ‘maachis ki teeli’ is mentioned, along with zoomed-in frames of a matchbox, it’s surprising that a matchstick brand didn’t pitch in for some product placement!
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