‘Jawan’ Features Two Shah Rukh Khans for the Price of One

One of Jawan’s biggest draws is that Khan plays a “double role”—i.e. he plays two different parts—a concept that recurs frequently throughout Indian cinema, but which Khan has only participated in a handful of times. To explain the exact relationship between his two characters (which is also teased in the movie’s trailer) would be to give away huge chunks of its winding and often nonsensical plot, though it may not be all that hard to figure out. The film opens in the 1980s, with a tribe along India’s eastern border finding a gravely injured soldier and bandaging his wounds from head to toe. When the tribe is attacked by a militia, this mysterious, anonymous fighter leaps into heroic action while still mummy wrapped, leading to the reveal of Khan’s face one feature at a time as the bandages burn away, like he’s a gift being slowly unwrapped. Armed with only a spear, his character deftly dispenses with each attacker. He does not, however, remember his name or identity.

This dim, fire-lit opening scene is frenetic and frenzied, almost to the point of confusion. Despite Atlee’s gratuitous use of speed-ramping—quick transitions between slow-motion and high-speed within the same motion, popularized by Zack Snyder’s 300—no individual shot seems to last more than a second. It’s an issue that pervades the entire film, but it also imbues Khan with a superhuman physical quality at first, like he’s too elusive and powerful for the frame to fully capture.

One of the characters Shah Rukh Khan plays in "Jawan" is Vikram Rathore.

Red Chilles Entertainment

Thirty years later, and without much explanation, an older, bald-headed Khan is re-introduced in a cosmopolitan setting aboard a metro train, which he sabotages and holds hostage alongside an elite squad of six high-tech, highly armed young women, each with their own unique spy talents. He goes by the name Vikram Rathore, and his team addresses him with diligent calls of “Good to go, chief!” With a grizzled rasp in his voice (akin to that of Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan), he makes a list of terrorist demands with noble outcomes, like the redistribution of wealth, and the disentanglement of politics from the influence of private industry. It becomes an instant TV spectacle. Meanwhile, police negotiator Narmada (Nayanthara) uses her skills and connections to get Rathore what he wants while also planning his capture, but he outsmarts her in audacious fashion, luring all of his hostages onto his side with sob stories about his six partners-in-crime and their reasons for assisting in his Robin Hood mission.

He explains, cartoonishly and at length, the inequities wrought upon common Indians, like farmers and students, by their government’s predatory practices. And while the film isn’t exactly about these structural mechanics, they’re folded explicitly into its purview so that the extras in each scene can help build its flimsy moral foundation. Jawan is a film in which each reaction shot is of someone shedding tears over plot exposition, though it’s seldom moving in and of itself (it rarely needs to be; not when its politics take the form of a Saw trap at one point). However, on occasion, these explanations of motive veer into lengthy flashbacks meant to further support the notion that Rathore’s ethical terrorism is rooted in severe injustice, and that he and his Charlie’s Angels are out to give the system a quick fix by holding it ransom. It’s a saccharine, righteous fantasy played on fast forward.

Few scenes or exchanges last long enough to allow for any thematic impact or meaning to take hold, so the words themselves often have to suffice. However, when your verbose, function-first dialogue is delivered by Khan, who knows exactly how to fine tune it for mass appeal, connective tissue and visual comprehensibility can safely take a backseat without things completely falling apart. Jawan often feels on the verge of collapse under the immense weight of its imagery, but the cast keeps it together, led by Khan’s expert comedic and dramatic timing, often in the same moment. A “special appearance” by his Pathaan co-star Deepika Padukone leads to some of the film’s only emotionally effective moments, and completing the equation is the quiet menace of Vijay Sethupathi as the aged, villainous business magnate Kaalie Gaikwad. His subtle, modulated, and at times terrifying performance makes for an alluring contrast with Khan’s bombast.

When the second character Khan plays finally comes into play...he enters with thunderous force, imposing body language, an exciting aura, and the kind of slick stylizations usually reserved for Tamil legend Rajinikanth...whom Khan joins atop the Indian cinematic pedestal as the epitome of effortless cool.

The further the film gets into its 167 minutes, the more labyrinthine and overly convenient its story becomes. However, Jawan is also the kind of movie where a doctor can tell if a woman is pregnant just by taking her pulse, if it means rushing the plot along to its next action set piece. It exists in a reality where time has no meaning in the present, but the past has a hold over every character in strange and profound ways, with stories of vengeance that run three decades deep, and with Khan’s character making references and callbacks to past events that he wasn’t even around to witness, but which introduce a sense of poetic irony nonetheless. This allows him to become the center of each and every payoff, even if it doesn’t make sense for him to be there. And when the second character Khan plays finally comes into play—no spoilers for who, when, or why—he enters with thunderous force, imposing body language, an exciting aura, and the kind of slick stylizations usually reserved for Tamil legend Rajinikanth—an actor whose image is often bathed in milk and worshiped akin to Hindu gods—whom Khan joins atop the Indian cinematic pedestal as the epitome of effortless cool.