Film: A Flying Jatt
Cast: Tiger Shroff, Jacqueline Fernandez, Nathan Jones, Amrita Singh
Director: Remo D’souza
Rating: * *
Runtime: 151 mins
Imagine a flying superhero who is afraid of heights, easily bullied and too scared to pick up a fight (even though he is a martial arts teacher), too tongue-tied to express his love even with super powers to dazzle his lady love and suddenly, quite inexplicable loses his rejuvenation powers just so that he can come back with an inspirational turban to send all evil(read garbage) out of this world(yeah literally)!
Forget about gaining height and stature, this one can’t even refuel on superhero logic. Incredible as it seems , many more contradictions stare you in the face as ‘A Flying Jatt’ dons a desi stitched-up costume(Drona, Krissh) and is sent on his business of vanquishing evil by a dominating , loud mother (Amrita Singh). There’s also the bit of the side-kick like brother Rohit(Gaurav Pandey)who is made to don the costume at regular intervals as a stand-in for the real thing and is quite dispensable to the family who appear to treat him as a disposable astringent.
And what’s the origin story to the Flying Jatt’s super powers? Well , in a fight between Aman and Raka over an age-old ( fake looking)Banyan tree, Aman is thrown into the womb of the tree whose bark has the religious sikh insignia embossed on it. That symbol gets emblazoned on Aman’s bare back and from therein begins his journey as a super hero.
The only good thing here is the environment friendly theme underlying the disastrous panoply of burrowed ideas (Marvels entire pantheon) that passes off as a story board of sorts. The ace villain Raka(Nathan Jones) who was sent packing to the garbage dumps by our low Flying Jatt a.k.a Aman(Tiger Shroff), suddenly finds himself feeding on the black energy emanating from garbage and eventually attains an invincible avatar- which comes in handy for Mr Malhotra(Kay Kay Menon)’s plans to usurp public land for his nefarious activities.
The narrative spiel comes undone with low key humor and a scratchy out-of-place attempt to decode the 12’o’ clock Sardarji riddle. While the explanation given is sound and brings to light the historical connection, it doesn’t really come in the flow of things here. The superhero costume looks quite patchy throughout- what with Tiger’s hairstyle going wayward from scene to scene.
The only time the costume gains strength is when a blue turban is added to the assemblage with a week’s growth of beard toughening up the pretty boy’s visage. For most of the movie, the low flying antics look pitiful and lacking in finesse.
Tiger gyrates quite beautifully but when it comes to drama, he doesn’t quite catch the nuances of the craft. Jacqueline has little to do other than act like a dimwit so it’s left to Guarav Pandey to pick up the slack and provide slapstick along with some bitter-sweet emotion. Action is mostly CGI and quite shoddy and thankless too. Production design is terribly fake looking, Blue screen tricks seem terribly low brow and the leaky sappy energy bursts are quite discomfiting. Frankly Remo would have been better off making another dance movie rather than a CGI infested superhero flick. This one is neither here nor there. Good may have vanquished evil eventually but at what cost to your senses..?
