Black and Bluethe fifth episode of the sixth season of Vince Gilligan’s Better Call Saulbegins—like a lot of cold openings typical of Gilligan’s work—with a silent montage of an artisan encasing a slide rule in a block of clear acrylic. The engraving reads, “In Liebe… Deine Jungs” (“With love… your boys”), and the piece is packed into a wooden box. (It becomes a cardinal sin to invoke the series without mentioning how criminally underwatched it is. So, here you go: it is criminally underwatched.)
If you’ve managed to watch up to this episode, you already know that this setup will have a massive payoff. You also know that you will completely forget about it within a few minutes, as you get engrossed in the incredible writing of one of modern-day long-form geniuses. But when the payoff hits, the memory of the setup rains down on you!
Also Read: Animals review | Ben Affleck’s Kurosawa riff is a bizarre misfire
Now, Nelson Dilipkumar, a known fan of the Breaking Bad universe, emulates such long setups and cold openings. In Doctoryou follow Dr N Varun (Sivakarthikeyan) in Goa, pretending to be a kidnapper to con the real kidnappers, but it doesn’t become evident until he does what he does. Jailer has such a ruse, too, in the sequence with Kannada actor Kishore in a cameo.
Jailer 2 also starts off with one such long setup, as you find Tiger Muthuvel Pandian trying to lead a low-key life and finding himself driving a van for a paper tiger of a gangster. The setup is engrossing, as Murthy (Namo Narayana), another quirky Nelson character, gives you a peek into the director’s funny head.
It is fun, hilarious, and all that, but it is not something that would make you forget what’s going on. A few minutes in, things do get predictable and you know what’s coming. This is true of most of Nelson’s work: he goes here, and there, but not there.
Yet Nelson’s films are some of the best entertainers because he brings those ideas to the most frivolous and mindless of genres: the masala padam. And Jailer 2 is another win on that account. How is that for a long setup?
Humor in deadpan expressions and silences
Nelson doesn’t bother spelling things out for you because his film language—and mostly his humor—is all about the silences and the faces. His scenes live in those expressionless looks of Rajinikanth. His humour thrives in those deadpan deliveries of Vimal (Yogi Babu) while suffering at the hands of his tormentor.
A dialogue would kill the life out of a scene where a bunch of dwarves are made to stand and show their fingers. You don’t know why it is funny, but the moment the character raises his bandaged finger, you can’t help yourself.
That’s why Jailer 2 has a brilliant first half where things aren’t spelled out. Tiger Muthuvel Pandian is living a low-key life as a salesperson in a department store. Yet, he ends up as a driver to a local gangster, Murthy. Now, Tiger slowly pulls Murthy into the statue smuggling racket, and by now, you know what Tiger is up to. Varman from the first part was just a small fish, and Tiger is working his way up to meet the final boss–bosses, in this case.
Omnipotent hero vs internal flaws
What’s challenging about writing a conflict for Jailer Tiger Muthuvel Pandian is that he is an omnipotent superhero. Even Varman from the first part wasn’t a formidable opponent for Jailer, except that he claimed to have his son as a hostage. The real conflict then turned out to be far more emotional than confrontational.
Nelson pulls off the same trick in this part, too. There are multiple villains in Jailer 2, but no one seems to be a match for Tiger. The kryptonite is never the bad guys, but Tiger’s own sins. Nelson has woven yet another mindless and cut-for-reels film with this emotional core.
Second half turbulence saved by hype
While he etches out a well-constructed first half where there aren’t too many actors fighting for screen space, the second half struggles to hold that coherence. The seams, the contrivances, and the deliberation become visible.
Yet, what keeps Jailer 2 fun is that every fifteen minutes, there is either a hype scene for Tiger or a big star enters for a cameo with Anirudh Ravichander’s BGM hyping him up. And Vijay Kartik Kannan’s vibrant and perfectly saturated frames make sure that there is no dull frame—literally.
Also Read: Don’t sympathise, empathise: Trans women activists on Dorothy
Also, Jailer 2 and most of Nelson’s film work succeed, despite their shortcomings, because of the humor. Rajinikanth dropping a game on Vidya Balan was straight-up unexpected. You see, Padayappa doesn’t flirt with Neelambari, nor does Mannan’s Krishnan with Shanthi Devi. And you also won’t see a kid commanding the Superstar around like a servant.
Boundaries Nelson pushes
That’s the essence of Nelson’s humour: it pushes the boundary and does so without proclamation. The shock is for the audience to perceive, and that applies to the violence in the film, too. You hardly find any character perturbed by the violence and gore in Nelson’s universe. They simply reach for tissues.
And it has a lot more to do with Nelson as a person than his writing. He is one of those rare talents who has found a way to project his sense of humor onto his characters, and the director certainly has a great one. That’s why when Nelson tries to take things a bit seriously in the second half, the film seems a bit off-character.
By the looks of the last scene, there might be a Jailer 3 and more to come. Nelson and Sun Pictures might reach out to Hollywood stars to play Tiger Muthuvel Pandian’s friends who owe him a favor, the snipers that became rockets might become missiles, and the grandson might grow up to be the next antagonist to Tiger. But despite the redundancies, as long as Nelson manages to muster up ideas like Moorthy Anna, Vimal, and Kohli, I will keep buying the tickets.