Movie Review: Junglee

Producers- Vineet Jain and Priti Sahani

Director- Chuck Russel

Star Cast- Vidyut Jamwal, Pooja Sawant, Asha Bhatt, Makrand Deshpande, Akshay Oberoi

Genre- Social

Rating- **

Lop sided script!

Jyothi Venkatesh

Raj Nair (Vidyut Jammwal), a veterinary doctor from Mumbai, visits his father after a long gap of ten years in their Chandrika elephant sanctuary (Odisha). Why on earth is the Nair family living in Oduisha has not been answered scientifically or for that matter logically. Soon after, a ghastly attack on the elephants by a bunch of poachers, led by (Atul Kulkarni), changes his life forever. Whether he is able to save the elephants from being poached forms the crux of the flimsy story line of the film. The film revolves around the veterinary doctor Raj Nair, who upon returning to his father’s elephant reserve, encounters and fights against an international poacher's racket

The scene stealer in the film is of course Vidyut Jammwal as the protagonist who is brilliant and one of the finest action heroes we have in Bollywood today. His action (without the help of a body double) is absolutely flawless and perhaps the best in the business. The jaw-dropping, lethal action scenes he portrays on screen and his mastery in martial arts puts him at par with the finest action heroes across the globe, though he has been wasted in the film which lacks a coherent story to back up his acts. A police station scene in particular, where a handcuffed Vidyut single-handedly dodges the cops, is spectacular.

Though there are two young girls to add to a touch of glamour in the film in the form of Asha Bhatt (Neera) and Pooja Sawant (Shankara), ironically there is no romantic track at all, may be because the roles of the girls are mot etched properly and end up in total as half baked ineffective characters. Akshay Oberoi looks like a misfit as the forest ranger while Makrand Deshpande is extremely stereotyped as the kalarippayattu trainer.Believe it or not, though eight writers have been employed to write the lop sided story, screenplay as well as the dialogues for the film, may be because the director does not know the language, justice has not been done to the film where in the climax, Meera refers to Raj’s father as Naik and not Nair.

To sum up, the extra star is for Vidyut for whose sake you should not miss the film, though it has a lop sided script, which h tests your patience.

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