The desire to witness and experience something fresh is at all time high among the Tamil cinema audience. From rightly fierce political theme to science fiction, we have films coming in genres other than the much cherished mass action genre. One such attempt is the recent release Jango helmed by debutant director Mano Karthikeyan. The story teller has developed his flick around the scientific concept known as time loop. A concept which even the Hollywood cinema has not explored as much as the done to death time travel concept. Actor Sathish Kumar plays the lead role. Tik Tok fame actress Mirnalini Ravi essays the female lead role. So how has the film made on the science fiction genre come out? To know that let us get in to the movie review.
Jango Poster
The drama follows the life of Gautham (Sathish Kumar), a successful neurosurgeon in Chennai. Jango opens with a flash news that an asteroid is on the pathway to hit planet earth. But Gautham does not have time to worry himself with this newscast as he is absorbed on get back with his estranged wife Nisha (Mirnalini Ravi), who works as a journalist in a news channel. Fate rolls its dice. And on the day of the asteroid collide, Gautham finds himself right under the explosion that takes place in the sky and he collapses. When he wakes up, things are normal and he goes back to living his life. But it does not take him long to discover that he is reliving the same day over and over every day. He realizes that he is struck in a time loop caused by the asteroid collide. Now he must find a way to break the loop to get out of it.
He begins to work on finding a way out, while still keeping himself at mending his relationship with Nisha. While he is up on it, he learns that someone has killed Nisha. Now, more than wanting to find a way out of the time loop, he wants to find out the person who murdered Nisha. So that he could stop the event from occurring. He teams up with his friend Krishnamoorthy (Karunakaran) and tries to track down the murderer. Meanwhile, we are introduced to a scientist (Hareesh Peradi) who is credited as Stephen Hawking’s protégé. But everything he does, makes him look like Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean protégé. Will Gautham figure out a way to bring things to normal, who and why someone wants Nisha dead, will Gautham track down the killer in time and stop him from committing the murder, is what makes the rest of the flick.
Director Mano Karthikeyan deserves to be commended for his efforts to try something different from the linear zone. When was the last time we had a proper science fiction flick in Tamil cinema? Back in 2015, in the likes of Indru Netru Naalai, which explored the time travel concept that for some reasons Tamil cinema film makers do not bother themselves with. If it is the time travel concept in Indru Netru Naalai, it is the time loop concept that Jango has as its heart. Indru Netru Naalai succeeded mainly because director Ravi Kumar had shaped the entertainer according to the taste of the Tamil audience. It was not anything fancy like the stuffs we usually witness in Hollywood films but it was apt for the audience who had not experienced such type of cinema before. This precise factor that Indru Netru Naalai got right is where Jango slides.
Film maker Mano Karthikeyan wants his film to be many things. There are scientific inventions, an alien angle, and a murder to be solved. But his writing is so weak to accommodate so many things in the plot. And it simply ends up making the proceeding messier. On top of this his casting and the technical department too do not have the firepower to achieve what he aims for. There is absolutely zero chemistry between the lead actors. Result of this, the romance portions do not work at all. This makes it difficult for us to root for the characters. Besides, the romance is not written well and its just the regular cliches. The budget with which director Mano Karthikeyan has worked, does not help either. When you have so many grandiose ideas you need a decent budget as well.
Actor Sathish Kumar seem like a miscast. He struggles to convincingly sell Gautham. Actress Mirnalini Ravi is just passable as Nisha. Seems like she has a long way to go before she could be accepted as a lead heroine. Actress Anitha Sampath plays an extended cameo and has delivered what was asked of her. Comedians Karunakaran and Ramesh Tilak do make us laugh but not even close to the scale that comedians are supposed to do. Actor Hareesh Peradi plays an interesting role, or rather a funnier one while it is supposed to achieve the contrary effect. Though his performance is good, it is the way how his character is written, that does not do justice to his performance. The rest of the cast has delivered a middling performance.
On the technical front, music director Mohamaad Ghibran’s songs are clearly not up to his standards. But he adds value to the movie with his background score. Cinematographer Karthik K Thillai’s camera work could have been better. Editor San Lokesh scissors are not as sharp as they should have been.
On the whole, with a decent budget and better writing Jango could have been a much better entertainer, and since it has not, it just ends up as a sloppy attempt.