Manoj Bajpayee adds gravitas to his role and makes an intriguing opponent for John’s character in the film. Debutante Aisha Sharma has a good screen presence, but ends up with a poorly-sketched role. Even Amruta Khanvilkar doesn’t get much scope to perform.

In the ‘morality’ tussle between a putative saviour and an unflappable defender of justice, it is cinema that takes a major beating. Satyameva Jayate, truth be told, is a film that has no apparent reason to exist. Not a shred of it is original. At best, it makes a silly spectacle of beating a dead, decomposed horse. At worst, it is a product of a tendentious mind. Satyameva Jayate is nonsensical, with nary a nod to logic.

Satyameva Jayate is a fairly illogical commercial thriller fronted by two actors who deliver forceful performances. It may not be the most intelligent thriller, but its lack of pretence is its greatest asset. It’s entertaining for some of the right reasons, and plenty of unintended ones.

Zaveri writes dialogues that are certain to inspire applause. But, given that it is sculpted to be a masala entertainer, the film is heavy only on action, not emotion.

With the clock ticking past the two hour mark, all the spiel on farz, izzat, imaandari is too familiar. You are left with a realisation: truth hurts but Satyamev Jayate hurts more.

John Abraham has Popeye’s muscles and Bluto’s scowl, but how many times can you watch a deadpan Hulk pull out a van door or burst forth from a truck tyre?

SMJ may evoke a sense of patriotism in India’s lynching community, where might is often right. The makers describe it as a single-screen delight!

John Abraham shows off his muscles, flares his nostrils, rips open a tyre quite like Sunny Deol had uprooted the handpump in Gadar. All the while, remaining steadfastly poker-faced when it comes to sporting an expression. Bajpayee looks lost in the film, rather the film is lost on him. Director Milap Zaveri dishes out the same old vigilante justice cinema that we grew up watching in the 80s with a special doff of the hat to the classic Deewar (1975). But his added tadkas can’t hide the essential staleness of the concoction. Satyameva Jayate is death by over pungent masalas.

Satyameva Jayate’s plot is twisted to hide some nice surprises, and its killing scenes, though daffy, are bloody and have enough filmy drama to keep us engaged.

We can get why John Abraham is in this film: he’s done this kind of movie before, and this looks like an extension, but what possessed the excellent Manoj Bajpayee, who can lift a film just by his presence, to do this?

John Abraham and Manoj Bajpayee’s film is a torturous, deeply irresponsible, phony and tone-deaf waste of time.

There’s a twist at the interval of Satyameva Jayate that left me truly gobsmacked. Mostly because I couldn’t really believe that legitimate human beings are given millions of rupees to execute these ideas. With full consent. Without a gun to their heads. Or kerosene on their bodies. In 2018. The Gods must be crazy. 

‘SMJ’ desperately tries very hard to sell the age-old idea of revenge and righteousness. But the big booming treatment is a little too hard to accept and digest. With John in the film, one can expect good action, but it’s gruesome and a little too bloody at times. Truth be told, the story is relevant in today’s times, but too many cliches in the story and the style of storytelling will make you want to cop out of this one.