Review: A Flying Jatt: Superhero as super bore

Director: Remo D’Souza Cast: Tiger Shroff, Jacqueline Fernandez, Nathan Jones,Kay Kay Menon, Amrita Singh By Saibal Chatterjee A superhero film that is bereft of anything that couldjustifiably be described as super, A Flying Jatt is a big birdwithout wings. It never quite takes off. Lead actor Tiger Shroff dances and moves pretty well. Itis in the acting department that he falls way short of theintensity needed to make the titular character work. A Flying Jatt, directed by co-screenwriter andchoreographer Remo DÂ’Souza, plays out like an overlong,utterly monotonous public service advert aimed at spreadingawareness about the need to protect the environment. Indeed, there is a message dovetailed into this chaoticand unremarkable good versus evil narrative. The slovenlyscreenplay seeks to blend doses of epic-scale heroism withdashes of earthy humour. The film does not strike the rightnotes on either score. A young drifter, Aman Dhillon (Tiger Shroff), is drawninto a bloody confrontation with an industrialist (Kay KayMenon) and his English-spouting superhuman accomplice Raka(WWE wrestler Nathan Jones) when his hard-drinking,tough-talking mother (Amrita Singh) opposes a nefarious planto take over a patch of land and cut down a tree revered bythe people. A Flying Jatt is a trite tale about a boy who, thanks todivine intervention, acquires invisible wings and a shield ofinvincibility and then goes out into the world to rid it ofits malcontents. Everything in the film is presented absolutely literally,so there is no scope of anything at all being left to theimagination of the audience. So, in one scene, we see the herowiping the cobwebs off the walls of his home. His mom exhortshim to something for the common good. Go clean up the city,she says. His mother’s diktat is his inspiration and he takes tothe air to give Raka a run for his money – well, by thelatter’s own admission, it isn’t money that he is after; helives off the noxious and dark fumes that a modern citygenerates. And that is the force of darkness that the intrepid andinsuperable protagonist has to contend with as he goes aboutputting things around him in order. Of course, he has a hell of a fight on his hands and itis presented in a manner so overheated that it becomesimpossible for the audience to be genuinely invested in itsoutcome. The members of the cast ham it up without a care in theworld. Even Kay Kay Menon, otherwise a fine actor by allreckoning, ends up looking like a sorry, simpering caricatureof a villain. Amrita Singh, seen on the screen after a long hiatus,adds to the cacophony by hollering uncontrollably at everyonewithin earshot. The worst spectacle is offered by Jacqueline Fernandes,playing a giggly girl who goes all aflutter every time she isin the presence of the flying superhero. If this isn’t rankbad acting, nothing else is. A Flying Jatt is a film that obviously wants to fly. Butsaddled with an actor whose limitations are all too obviousand a shoddy script, it can only limp along without muchpurpose or direction. PTI CORRJCH