ENgAgINg COURTROOM DRAMA

J Olly Llb

STArring: Arshad Warsi, Boman Irani,Sourav Shukla, Amrita Rao direCTed By:

Subhash Kapoor HHHH

It’s not often that a film manages to hit us with a statement on a social malaise, and yet succeed in telling a story so engaging you want to applaud the enterprising spirit of this engrossing saga of the judge, the judged and the damned.

What ails the legal system in our country? We could go on and on about that one, and still not answer it satisfactorily.

Subhash Kapoor’s brilliantly scripted film examines the loopholes in the legal system through which the rich and the privileged manage to go scot-free after committing terrible crimes.

Here, it’s a young tycoon mowing down six pavement dwellers in his fancy car in the dead of the night. Sounds familiar? Jolly LLB grabs the headlines about a hit and run case, and turns it into a rollercoaster ride in the courtroom as the young struggling lawyer from Meerut, Jolly (Arshad Warsi) takes on the mighty attorney Jaipal

Writer-director Subhash Kapoor makes the dull reality of Indian life come alive with his digs at the games the rich play.

The solid screenplay throws forward many surprises as layer after layer of corruption and compromise are peeled off revealing the raw wounds of betrayal and hurt.

Though Jolly wins his case at the end, his story leaves you deeply saddened. Is this the India that our forefathers fought for our future generations, where a hotshot ruthlessly immoral lawyer smirks in the courtroom, “Now, if people sleep on the pavements there is a risk of them being killed.”

Right, so the poor don’t really deserve to live…

In one of many radical turning-points in the plot, Arshad stops on a pavement to take a pee. A man pleads, “Could you urinate somewhere else? My family sleeps here?”

Such moments of gut-wrenching heartbreaking poignancy cut through the cynical space that this provocative courtroom drama occupies.

If life and art were entirely fair, Arshad would be one of the biggest stars in our film industry. As a petty lawyer whose conscience undergoes a rousing awakening, Arshad gives a superlative performance creating a compelling graph for his smalltown lawyer’s overreaching character.

As for Boman Irani, this actor’s brilliance has no full stops. Here as the mean manipulative lawyer, he creates a snarling evil and a contempt for human value though the narrowing of the eye or curling of the lip.

But my favourite performance comes from Saurav Shukla. As an indolent slob of a judge who comes into his own as the case progresses, he serves up the film’s biggest lesson: never undermine the moral strength of a seemingly desensitised Indian.

This is a kinky, artful and thought

Though stubbornly economical, Dhulia’s narrative is never short of breath as the characters move towards a perverse nemesis.

SBAGR has its flaws, oh yes! The “rajneeti” of the second-half melts into a kind of uneasy sexual tension. We don’t know whether to laugh or cry when Mahie, after inviting the cheesy Irrfan into a posh hotel room for an afternoon of drunken pleasures, suddenly sobs, “I don’t have any friends”.

The characters, in fact, are so savagely tragic that they end up looking comical in their self-appointed positions of septic ambitions. You really can’t like any of the people in Dhulia’s world of sex, politics and crime.

Ask them if they care!

SBAGR is a dramatic, savagely tragic and unexpectedly humorous sequel with gutsy passionate performances. This is not a film you can fall in love with. It’s a drama of dreadful disenchantment that doesn’t allow you the luxury of affection.

SuBHASH K. JHA

provoking courtroom comedy with impeccable performances by the ever-dependable Boman, Saurav and the grossly underrated Arshad.

Su BHASH K. J HA