It’s been two years since Tamil-speaking Indian movie star C. Joseph Vijay released a new action vehicle and by the looks of “Jana Nayagan,” his latest and supposedly final starring role, it appears that Vijay’s production company either ran out of money fast or never had enough to suit their movie’s over-inflated proportions. “Jana Nayagan” isn’t an ambitious movie, being a remake of “Bhagavanth Kesari,” Telugu star Nandamuri Balakrishna’s polished and deliriously over-the-top 2023 nationalist actioner.
In both cases the filmmakers put the “fa” in “antifa” by first excessively terrorizing and then unbelievably advocating for women in both the military and the political arena, too. And in “Jana Nayagan,” Vijay, who in real life was just elected the Chief Minister of the Tamil Nadu state, also wants viewers to know that the real threat to the country’s democracy is actually a rage-baiting terrorist who has no politics of his own, but still uses social media to start a caste war? Some reviewers have already dinged Vijay’s swan song for being too blunt in its political sloganeering (“Change takes time!”), but the movie’s so apolitical that its second-hand sermonizing never seems as pressing as, say, its numbing over-reliance on AI art.
“Jana Nayagan” assaults viewers with AI animation throughout, not only in big set pieces, but interstitial scenes featuring AI extras and even some AI-enhanced versions of the main cast members. This environmentally destructive and aesthetically displeasing technology enables many of the filmmakers’ worst ideas, which are only big in scale. And if AI art is the rancid icing on “Jana Nayagan”’s proverbial cake, it can’t be scraped off without taking most of the flavor and texture with it.
Vijay stars as the righteous Thalapathy Vetri Kondan, an indomitable ex-con and ex-cop whose main goal in life is to raise Viji (Mamitha Baiju), the daughter of his sworn brother Srikanth (Gautham Vasudev Menon), who dies in a freak car accident soon after he’s introduced. Viji suffers from panic attacks ever since she saw her mother die (thankfully off-screen) in a fiery riot. That’s only a problem for Viji because her dad wanted her to join the army and her panic attacks make her physical training especially challenging. Unfortunately, Vetri and Viji’s plans are pre-empted by a nutty conspiracy to destabilize India, led by the vindictive mercenary John Himmler (Bobby Deol). And for the sake of clarity: no, Himmler’s not his real name, and yes, there is a post-intermission backstory that gives Vijay an ostensibly personal connection with his latest nemesis. Got all that? Good, now let’s talk about chintzy robot dogs and ugly musical numbers.
As you might surmise from John’s surname, it’s hard to take seriously the filmmakers’ desperate need to stack the deck against Viji and her surrogate guardian. There are so many baffling creative decisions, and, in true masala style, it’s all in the name of servicing every imaginable taste. In an early scene, Vijay bullies a would-be assassin and his crew into singing an old man a lullaby. That scene has multiple punchlines and very few laughs. Later on, an AI-generated melee breaks out between a teeming horde of army men and a battalion of laser-blasting androids, complimented by a platoon of murderous robo-dogs. That climactic eyesore looks completely lifeless and unappealing, but it’s nothing compared to the movie’s surreally grim musical numbers, featuring a wealth of visually over-saturated AI backgrounds and a legion of AI-generated/composited extras dancing right alongside Vijay. I wish I could tell you what I thought about marquee-topping composer Anirudh’s score, but I was too distracted by the soul-crushing spectacle of watching Vijay celebrate himself on a dollar store budget.
The drama’s stakes are as apocalyptically high as Vijay’s self-regard since India is repeatedly said to be on the brink of devolving into a new Pakistan or a new Africa (don’t ask) without intervention from some right-minded populist strongman. It’s hard enough to ignore the movie’s galling AI atrocity footage, including lynched terrorist victims and hideously malnourished African children. It’s even harder to overlook how many times the filmmakers threaten Viji and other women, including a flashback that only ends after a naked (but pixelated) and obviously AI-generated corpse is thrown out of a moving van. Vijay tries to act the hero by using an Indian flag to cover up the body, flanked as it is by AI flies.
Honestly, everything that’s gallingly bad about “Jana Nayagan” was in Vijay’s recent movies, but his defining lack of restraint is normally more of a feature than a bug. Here, Vijay wails on a misogynist who boasts about how much stronger he is than Viji right before he delivers an interminable speech about respecting women. This is right before Vijay makes like Roger Moore and blows up an AI helicopter with an AI rocket launcher and then says to himself, “Blast!” Good luck to Vijay in his political career, and I hope he never makes anything as perfectly oppressive as “Jana Nayagan” again.
