At the tail end
of Feb 14 around 9pm-ish, which also happened to be Valentine's day 2020, I was having a craving for a movie as I had adequately met or maybe exceeded the male passing grades that the day demanded :) …so I flicked
around on Amazon Prime and came upon a curiously titled 'Satyameva Jayate' with
a release date in August 2018; I don't watch Bolly movies often, so many pass
by without a second glance but this one looked OK and not dated too much - a
year and a half. After dancing my remote
around a few more movies I decided that none of the other ones quite piqued my
interest and so settled on the aforementioned movie, as I like the lead actor.
My intention here is
not to dwell much on the gist of the movie, except that it had only a slender and barely perceptible nexus to the significance of the day at hand. To give context to those who might have also missed out on this motion picture, it suffices to say that in between the
usual Bolly melodramatic scenes it does a decent job of showing a vigilante who goes
after corrupt and predatory cops and usually finishes them off in an incandescent
fashion to save them on cremation costs. That too only after bashing them to pulp to exact
some retribution for the reprehensible acts they committed -- so I guess it saves the family both cremation costs and the abhorrent fees of a plastic surgeon to bring them back to normal from vaguely looking like the Phantom of the Opera or other scary Halloween characters, once the punitive measures had been taken. The lot he picks
on are hardly worthy of empathy; the heartless jerk cops who use their uniform to skim money by preying on the weak and the poor; and some even abusing and assaulting women. The lead character has an extra bonus thrown in for the head detective in charge of outing him: he is also trying to play a Sunday newspaper back-page word game by
picking the scumbags whose first initial match those of the letters of the
incantation 'Satyameva Jayate' that was adopted by a fledgling nation in 1947
as its imprimatur 'truth alone is victorious' or a close resemblance to that. The one little gem that only Bollywood could have dreamed about: the older brother of the protagonist (played by John Abraham) is the IPS cop given the unenviable task to bring him to justice (Manoj Bajpayee). All this is moot if you have seen the movie, so let's get on with the point, although I will have to describe the final scene as briefly as I can as it has everything to do with why I wrote this piece in the first place.
In the final scene, the vigilante is shot in
the back by his older brother cop in a tear jerking moment. The older bro does it with great trepidation and moral
dilemma as the delectable villain who was being taken down in the final scene
is a pastel faced scoundrel who years earlier had framed their dad (also a cop) as being
corrupt by planting drugs and money in his house. This led to the honest cop's utter
humiliation and he took his own life which scarred both brothers but in different ways; the younger believed in his father and the older one felt tainted; usual Bolly script lego building blocks!! This villain was also the older brother's reporting IPS officer but his
dark and perfidious deeds were only exposed in the final scene, which predictably caused a on-the-spot change of heart towards his dad for the elder bro. In any case
even after our hero is shot in the back, he manages to burn alive the IPS
officer who had caused the devastation to their family; because the preparatory
marinating of the villain had already been done by virtue of a gallon of
kerosene being doused upon him and all that remained was flicking a lighted match towards him, which
our hero managed even after taking a bullet. For both of us watching, the movie did do a good job of holding our interest.. and now comes the real crux.
Once the lead got shot in the back by his bro, my wife and
I felt a little rummy that such a folk hero who was part Robin Hood, part
Incredible Hulk, and part Cupid and who had dispensed such gratifying frontier
justice wouldn't survive in the end. He
would not get united with his love interest who also happened to be the kiddo
of the dirty IPS officer. So instead of watching the bitter end I paused the TV
set four minutes from the end while the mournful soliloquy of the older brother holding his sibling in his arms was still in midstream. I didn't
want to see the inevitable finale as I am a little bit of a softy when it comes
to seeing the hero bite the dust. Just as we were lamenting the ending, my wife
mentioned that I should take the help of Google to decide whether we should see
the last four minutes. That was a brilliant idea. Maybe he survived!! So I hurriedly fished out my phone and typed
in the magic search words. I was crestfallen as the first search result said
Veer Rathod (John Abraham's character)
dies in the climax. Not a happy ending to Valentine's day. But then… wait a
minute. As my eyes glanced over the other search results, I spied a 'Satyameva
Jayate 2'!!!!! WHOA.. Wait a minute. Does a box office hit and dollar signs
breathe life into a sequel? … and inject some bonhomie into the two of us????
My emotions perked up as a few more clicks
proved that indeed a movie sequel has the wherewithal to revive a character who
had taken a bullet in his back from his own brother!!! . True to form, Satyameva Jayate 2 had a
release date of Gandhi Jayanti Oct 2, 2020; apparently the director has divined
that people can duly honor the Father of the Nation by watching a flick where
the main character beats the brains out of a select few from the miasma of
corrupt bureaucrats and then wraps up a job well done with a gratuitous
cremation. This lead to a volte-face of our mood into one bordering elation
and some keen speculation as to how the Director/Screenwriter would resurrect
John Abraham's character literally on the verge of taking his last breath (at
least when we suspended our viewing) at the beginning of SJ 2…various
possibilities entered our suddenly rejuvenated and adrenaline filled brains,
and we decided to skip the last portion because we know he convalesces from
this little ordeal of the bullet in his back!! All's well that ends well. Maybe we all have to
wait till October 2020 to find out the Director has in store for us, but HAPPY ENDING thanks to Google!!
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