Jawan

Vigilante films that aim to shatter the establishment can be a bit exhausting, but when the clean-up is spearheaded by swagger-powered leads like Shah Rukh Khan and Nayanthara, the film gets a major shot in the arm. If you are willing to surrender to his movie-star magic, then you are likely to enjoy this vociferous vigilante fare a lot more.

Jawan is a big screen spectacle. It is flawed but at a time where everything is over-analysed, it makes for a good time at the cinemas. Ready or not, this is a ride that's definitely worth taking.

A star vehicle that functions like a runaway train, Jawan covers a lot of ground in surprising fashion at full throttle – but that's also a polite way of admitting it's utterly all over the place. There's ego involved, undeniably, but few stars in any cinema could model such radically diverse hats with this much flair.

Jawan is a wholesome watch that won't give you any dull moment. Atlee makes sure he doesn't disappoint audiences in his Hindi directorial debut, as he blends all the elements of commercial cinema to build a massy entertainer.

"Jawan" is very, very political. It makes some heavy-handed statements about civic duty, but it asks those in power to do better just as strongly as it urges viewers to channel their SRK enthusiasm into making real change. It's a doozy to review without spoiling, as it's a film that must be experienced on a massive screen with a massive crowd.

Jawan works best as validation of the Hindi film-watching public's immaculate Pavlovian response... When all the shouts have been shouted and all the whistles whistled, what are we left with? Probably a very successful film—and a frustratingly basic one.

"Jawan" will probably delight Khan's established fans, and maybe uninitiated viewers, too, if only because he's comfortably playing the hits, now with somewhat greater conviction and a little more polish. The main reason "Jawan" doesn't deliver more than what Khan has previously delivered is because its creators seemingly included every masala-style subplot they could think of. Still, "Jawan" is unlike Khan's last two comeback trail stops because its creators are better at navigating its many hairpin twists and turns.

Atlee's guts-and-glycerine saga has big names from the Hindi and Tamil industries, a crowd-pleasing theme of vigilante justice, slickly filmed action set pieces, snarky humour and earnest social messaging topped by Shah Rukh Khan in peak charismatic mode. Fleet despite its 169-minute runtime, with sequence after sequence designed to draw whistles as well as wring out tears, Jawan deftly leaps from one incredulous moment to the next.