JSK – Janaki Vs State of Kerala Review

JSK aka Janaki V Vs State of Kerala, which initially didn’t have that V before Vs, is your gallery pleaser legal thriller. The film by Pravin Narayanan is trying to make it look like an exploration of how the legal system works based only on evidence. But what you ultimately get is a series of courtroom rhetorics from a superstar whose filmography is known for that. With a basic case going through beats that don’t feel exciting to the audience, JSK is a movie that shields itself from criticism by acting like the voice of the people.

The story revolves around a girl named Janaki. She was working in Bangalore as an IT employee, and one time, when she came home for a weekend to take part in the nearby temple’s festival, she was raped. The case goes to the court, and advocate David Abel Donovan, who is known for standing by people who need help in cases, decides to represent the accused. How that makes things difficult for Janaki and how her legal fight goes forward is what we see in JSK.

Suresh Gopi portrays the role of a lawyer who fights for justice but represents the criminals in the courtroom. The first image that will pop up in most people’s minds would be Lal Krishna Viradiyar from Chinthamani Kolacase. That movie was a filmy vigilante justice tale, which was clear from the word go that what you are seeing is an extremely cinematic version of justice. JSK is a movie that wants to make the proceedings mostly believable. However, since it has a leading man known for his oratory heroism, the writing goes after this outdated style of spoon-feeding dramatic, lengthy dialogues. So, if you still feel “Mohan Thomasinte Uchishttam…” would work in a modern-day movie, or you miss those movies with that kind of dialogue, this one might work for you.

At one point in the movie, the police character played by Yadu Krishnan is stating things in the courtroom very enthusiastically, and David tells him to relax. It almost felt like Suresh Gopi was giving an acting tip to Yadu. More than acting, the movie is trying to use the image Suresh Gopi has created for himself. Except for Varane Aavashyamundu, almost all the other films he has acted in recent times have filmmakers trying to recreate his old firebrand image, and in most cases, it has resulted in these sluggish outputs. One of the joys of watching Suresh Gopi’s performance was seeing him hold the constitution while criticizing the government for focusing only on road construction, ignoring cooperative society bank scams, and a flawed women’s safety policy.

Anupama Parameshwaran plays the character of Janaki in this movie, and it is a character mostly in that disheartened space, and she was fine in portraying the emotions of that character. Askar Ali plays the role of a police officer. Dialogue delivery used to be one of his weak points, and this is a movie that has a lot of stiff dialogue, and he is not able to deliver it smoothly. The makers have tried to give the least amount of lines to Madhav Suresh, and yet his dialogue delivery is so flawed that when you see him on screen, you are secretly hoping he won’t open his mouth. Shruti Ramachandran, who appears as an advocate in the film, was perhaps the only one who was able to find a fairly good balance when it comes to delivering lines.

The movie’s graph is very inconsistent. It will try to build situations in a way that we would anticipate something fresh happening. After creating that anticipation, it would go for something really generic. Since it is a Suresh Gopi movie, we can easily guess that when someone says “getting him from there is difficult”, who will go there and do the impossible in the most heroic style. At regular intervals, the movie goes into these twists or reveals that aren’t that remarkable. The script puts the judicial system in a spot of bother by applying Article 21 at one point. To be frank, that situation itself is a fascinating idea for a legal drama. But here it just becomes a venue for a fully filmy verdict that might satisfy those who think chopping the penis will prevent violence against women.

Most of the mouth publicity for this movie happened when the CBFC made some seemingly stupid remarks like a character shouldn’t be named Janaki as it is another name of Sita Devi. And it was said that in a certain scene in court, the name Janaki was muted, and the name of the movie was changed to Janaki V Vs State of Kerala. The bizarre part is that, in the film, there are multiple instances where the character is addressed as Janaki by many characters inside the courtroom. And there is even a news report bit where the anchor says Janaki Vs State of Kerala. The objection to the name of Janaki itself was strange, and the changes they have made to the movie are even weirder. I am guessing if the judge watches the reedited version, he might ask the CBFC folks, What exactly was your problem in the first place?