Any criticism against Jana Supervisor hits a brick wall of an excuse, one that demands cinema be compromised for a superstar. Viewers are expected to overlook the film straying from narrative and form to cater to fans, because the film is a farewell gift made for the fans by a superstar who has built his career on such mindless commercial films. Hence, expecting anything out of the ordinary is dismissed as unwise. It becomes a matter of bargain.
But Jana Supervisor can’t just be that. It has another job. While it’s a swansong for a superstar-actor, it also has to serve as a war cry for a new political leader. In the end, Jana Supervisor is less a film and more fan service, and even more a campaign reel.
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From the get-go, it’s apparent the film was made for an election campaign, what might have been Vijay’s “Brahmastra.” In a small Tamil Nadu village, people are scared to vote for parties other than the one in power. A police officer, to encourage them and instil courage, starts narrating the story of Thalapathy Vetri Kondan (Vijay), or TVK for short. This has become the template for South Indian hype films since the success of KGFand this film tries hard to be Vijay’s KGF. It fails, though, because beneath all the hype and noise, KGF was a simple, straightforward film about a promise and the protagonist’s relentless pursuit of it.
A story torn in too many directions
Jana Supervisor‘s story, on the other hand, resists a simple summary. It could be described as an adopted father moving the world to make his troubled daughter a strong woman. But then, what to make of the sci-fi pulp arc involving the villain Himler (Bobby Deol), which feels lifted from a bad Tamil superhero film? On top of the tension between domestic and global stakes, there’s a modern-day Kannagi arc and a tribal-village-destruction arc. In the end, the film is a potpourri of scenes engineered to project everything Vijay wants to represent to the public. Scene after scene, Vijay rescues a hapless soul, each mission preceded by an intro sequence, rescued mostly by Anirudh Ravichander’s Raavan Mavan Dawith lyrics by Vivek. Without the music, Jana Supervisor would be a shadow of what it is.
A film reel of election promises
What the film actually is, is a reel where each segment delivers one election promise. Director H Vinoth even halts the story abruptly to let Vijay lecture children on good touch and bad touch. Throughout, Thalapathy Vetri Kondan comes across as a woman-empowerment extremist, pushing his daughter Viji (Mamitha Baiju) to a point where she simply wants to be left alone. While his intentions seem right, he fails to grasp that a woman choosing to have no ambition, and simply be, is also a form of empowerment worth respecting. But Thalapathy is all about tough love, to the point that he doesn’t flinch at Viji being beaten in front of him.
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Villains as political stand-ins
The film’s other mission is to take on religious and caste-based politics, with Himler as the face of this divisive politics. Bobby Deol’s character gets substantial screen time, including an origin story in which an honest cop suffers a tragic moral fall and embraces his “Goblin” side. Himler is meant to embody politician Vijay’s ideological enemy, while Prakash Raj’s Roja Rangasamy, a corrupt local politician from a long line of them, stands in for his political rival.
Timing that undercuts the film
The film might have landed better had it released before the Tamil Nadu election. Its shortcomings, clunky dialogue and weak performances, might then have been overlooked in favour of spotting its subtle political digs. Now, after the results are in, the propaganda film reads more like a thesis on the election itself, and its cracks are wide open. Nearly every villain shares the same laugh that has echoed through decades of Tamil cinema, a holdover from Tamil theatre. Even the romance feels shockingly thin: All it takes for Kayal (Pooja Hegde) to fall for TVK is watching him in action once. She asks Viji if Thalapathy is married; on hearing “no,” she smirks in a moment straight out of a cringe-fest.
Not a film, but a communication channel
At the end of the day, Jana Supervisor isn’t a film, it’s a communication channel between a superstar and his diehard fans, who have now become his voters. If the claps, hoots, and celebration on screen seem beyond comprehension, know that you simply aren’t speaking their language. The bond between an idol and his devotees has rarely been legible to non-believers.
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