The world of John Abraham would be excited to watch their handsome hunk doing something for the nation dobara (again) after filling our hearts with love and pride in PARMANU: THE STORY OF POKHRAN.
Has the handsome hunk convinced his audience finally that he is the best alternative to the reigning SINGHAM’s, DABANNG’s’ and BAAGHI’s?. Has writer Milap Milan Zaveri succeeded in wiping out the dirt of forced vulgarity and raunchiness in MASTIZAADE with a touted massy action thriller SATYAMEVA JAYATE?, let’s find out.
Set in Mumbai, SATYAMEVA JAYATE opens with a corrupt policeman charred to death by Vir (John Abraham), a vigilante. Vir is smart and is a painter by profession. Leaving no clue and targeting the ‘corrupt’ policeman, Vir is on rampage, the merciless killer is finding support and the police is in question. Police Commissioner (Manish Chaudhry) calls upon DCP Shivansh (Manoj Bajpayee) to catch Vir. What follows is something you probably must have known or even if you don,t, it doesn,t matter, but we still want to save ourselves from being called as spoilers and don,t wish to hamper the right of ‘choice’ of those who wish to watch this movie.
An instant noodle junk that combines Akshay Kumar’s GABBAR IS BACK with SINGHAM, DEEWAR, and every mundane clichés of bollywood pot boilers, writer Milap Milan Zaveri’s script is saggy righty from the word go. Undeniably intense right from the opening scene but the whole idea behind the merciless killings fails to make a proper sense. The movie moves in one direction and lacks dimensions. Vir is a character who is gung ho on his mission but the audience is left figuring out, the characters lack personality, graph and proper establishment.
Milap Milan Zaveri tries his hand in action this time and gets it right at places; it’s raw, edgy, rustic and brutal. The Muharram sequence is all what Bollywood machismo is made of to make the hungry souls of the genre go wild.
Undoubtedly John Abraham has the ‘jism’ (body) and the ‘josh’ (passion) but the proceedings in SATYAMEVA JAYATE monitored by Milap Milan Zaveri is a catastrophe of a desired massy action packed potboiler. The protagonist has its reason to kill but the audience is not entirely convinced, suddenly out of the blue DCP Shivansh (Manoj Bajpayee) figures out the next target and a gyan on the title is spread and we thank our fortune that at least it has nothing to do with the powerful television show hosted by Aamir Khan and the 1987 social action drama starring Vinod Khanna which shares the same name. With dialogues like ‘tujhe aisi maut maroonga, kit u is janam mein jalega or dard agle janam tak chalega” writer director Milap Milan Zaveri has certainly gone overboard and out of control.
Other actors Manoj Bajpayee and Manish Chaudhry waste their talent. Aisha Sharma and Amruta Khanvilkar had nothing much to do.
Production values are first rate, Nigam Bomzan ‘s cinematography shines. However music by Sajid-Wajid, Tanishk Bagchi, Rochak Kohli, Arko Pravo Mukherjee is disappointing. Sanjoy Chowdhury’s background score is passable. Maahir Zaveri’s editing needed extra scissors during the climax.
We all have heard of damsel in distress, ironically SATYAMEVA JAYATE is the touted massy action dhamaka in distress designed to cash on Independence Day weekend which unfortunately leans and relies very much on mundane Bollywood convention and hopes for an action hero like John Abraham who still needs to land that knockout punch to make the upper cut and do all the rescue.
