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Jailer 2 (Tamil, 2026)
Director: Nelson Dilipkumar
This is strictly for all Rajini fans. That 75-year-old surely deserves a standing ovation for single-handedly putting this film together. Despite all the big names in this movie, Ramya Krishnan, for one, single-handedly holds the film up as the Rock of Gibraltar. Rajnikanth's star presence is so strong that he overshadows everyone else. The unnecessary cameos by Bollywood actors who have seen better times, like Jackie Shroff and Hrithik Roshan, simply legitimise his reign as a superstar for 50 years. The film conveys this veiled message through one of its many punch dialogues.
Mithun Chakravathy, who has appeared in a few South Indian movies, is a baddie among the many baddies who get pulverised when Rajini assumes his Narasimha form and goes on a killing spree through his unseen proxies. Vidya Balan, in a rare Tamil film appearance, is a badass Neelambari on steroids. The only thing is, the original actor who played the original Neelambari is a pale shadow of her former self, now playing a docile grandmother and wife. SJ Suryah, in his usual self, completes the kuhana trio with his quirky dialogues and sadistic acts. Mahesh Babu is the usual unlucky baddie, uttering self-deprecating yet philosophical one-line soliloquies.
Rajnikanth no longer does gravity-defying stunts. All he needs to do is get his invisible henchmen to carry out his destruction, with a little help from his spectacles, which may be sending mini guided missiles directly to the intended villains. He gets away with doing majestic walks shot with long-lens cameras, delivering one-liner punch dialogues, and lines that remind viewers of scenes from his yesteryear movies. Realistically, he does not gyrate with beauties, but the sugar-candy department is confined to the Mafia's celebratory parties.
In Jailer 2, Rajinikanth assumes the role of a doting grandpa and a retired jailer, minding his own business as a supervisor at a minimart. A minor tiff with a corrupt water department snowballed into a massive clash with a Hindu idol-stealing syndicate and a mafia network.
The first half of the story is easygoing and engaging. From Jailer 1, viewers know Rajinikanth's son was a turncoat. Rajinikanth punished him for his betrayal. This becomes part of the climax. Meanwhile, non-Rajinikanth fans have to endure long fight scenes, senseless explosions, and unnecessary cameo appearances by stars from Mollywood, Tollywood, and Sandalwood, who are not relevant to the storyline but are meant to draw ticket collections on a pan-Indian scale. Vijay Sethupathi shows up for five seconds in an irrelevant scene at the end.
The producers clearly have Jailer 3 in the pipeline, as the surviving villains look into the horizon, licking their wounds and thinking.
A feel-good that whets the appetites of moviegoers, old and new, each telling themselves the hero in them never dies. The hero just has to rebrand himself. Hukum, Tiger ka Hukum!
Farouk Gulsara (asokansham@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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