Jaane Jaan Hindi Movie
Sujoy Ghosh's new thriller, "Jaane Jaan," is based on the Japanese novel "The Devotion of Suspect X." The title is also a nod to an old Lata Mangeshkar song. As a Suspect X adaptation, the movie has a story that is somewhat similar to the first part of "Drishyam". Like in "Drishyam", the movie initially focuses on a family, a mother and her girl child, in Kalimpong. Kareena Kapoor Khan plays Maya D'Souza, a single mother with a restaurant business. She leads a quiet and peaceful life with Naisha Khanna's Tara D'Souza. But the arrival of an uninvited guest threatens to topple their world upside down. Maya calls this "guest" a cockroach, a metaphor for the uninvited arrival of the person in their family. They kill the person in self-defense.
Now, this is where the movie differs from the Malayalam film Drishyam. In the Malayalam film, only the main family members know about the murder in the house. In Jaane Jaan, however, a person from outside the family figures out the murder and comes up with an elaborate scheme to cover it up. Like in Drishyam, the audience knows the identity of the killer but not the cops. The part of the movie after the murder involves the main characters trying to stay one step ahead of the cops.
For a howdunit, Jaane Jaan is fairly straightforward. The plot is intriguing to an extent, but it is full of gaping holes. We do not know exactly how they manage to get away with the crime. Further, the treatment of Vijay Varma's cop character is not as smart as it appears on paper. For the most part, Ghosh shows Varma's Karan Anand as a cop with a good sense of intuition and good detective skills. However, it is hard to believe that he does not trust his instincts or skills enough when it comes to solving a key part of the puzzle. There are also clunky attempts to bring out the romantic angle between the cop and his "hot suspect."
Nevertheless, the performances and atmospherics make Jaane Jaan an engaging watch throughout. Appreciably, Ghosh integrates certain characteristics of Kalimpong into the screenplay to make it a character on its own. The misty Kalimpong is a place ripe for great mysteries. The atmosphere of the film also lends it an appropriately moody tone, adding an extra dimension to the main characters in it. The performances of the leads are also excellent throughout.
Vijay Varma plays the no-nonsense cop with equal parts flamboyance and restraint. It's a departure from his cop role in Kaalkoot. It is hard to shake off Kareena Kapoor Khan's "Jab We Met" image even today, but she summons the right emotions for the situations and makes her character's moods palpable enough. But the knockout performance in Jaane Jaan comes from Paatal Lok star Jaideep Ahlawat. Playing a social recluse, this is an actor on top of his game, and he seldom misses a beat here.
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