Jaane Jaan is a smart whodunnit with an earthy Kareena Kapoor Khan and a brilliant Jaideep Ahlawat

Starring: Kareena Kapoor Khan, Jaideep Ahlawat, Vijay Varma, Lin Laishram, Karma Thakapa, Saurabh Sachdeva, Naisha Khanna  

One of the most watchable genres of films is the whodunnit as characters become what they’re not in the quest to find the person behind the crime. These films, if they’re slick and emotionally charged, are elevated with a fine cast of actors. Sujoy Ghosh’s Jaane Jaan, an adaptation of the Japanese novel The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino, has all these ingredients in place. 

The movie features Kareena Kapoor Khan in a bare-bones, earthy role, which is quite refreshing, and Vijay Varma is meticulous and very unlike his villainous acts. But the best thing about this Indian adaptation of an oft-adapted novel is Jaideep Ahlawat. 

Given that this is a whodunnit, the synopsis is sketchy and indicative.  Maya D’Souza (Khan) runs a cafe in the hill station of Kalimpong, West Bengal, with a large Nepali population. Prema (Lin Laishram) and a local man work for her, making them a cosy team of three who share jokes while dishing out fried rice, momos and baked goodies. 

Maya and her teenage daughter, Tara, live in the same building as math teacher Naren (Jaideep Ahlawat), lovingly referred to as ‘Teacher’. A person goes missing and that’s when the smart Mumbai police officer Karan Anand (Vijay Varma) arrives at the scene. What follows is a story of murder, suspicion, investigation, and friendship. 

The story features a series of quick, punchy twists and turns that leave the viewer guessing about love, devotion, and insanity. 

Ghosh had previously directed Kahaani (2012) and Badla (2019) wherein cities and locations become crucial to the plot. Ghosh and his director of photography (Avik Mukhopadhyay) adapt the landscape of Kalimpong, almost like a character in itself. 

Kalimpong is shrouded in fog, damp and in a state of somnambulant, with everyone greeting everyone else in this hill station. Momos and egg fried rice feature in menus that characters eat regularly, even as old wood-structured houses bring scope for listening in to other’s conversations. In the film, a school features prominently, an ode to the legacy of heritage schools that have held out in the face of uber modernity in this part of the country.

Kalimpong provides a contrast to the din of cities, letting mystery and murder bloom in its languid pace. 

The narrative of Jaane Jaan goes beyond the procedural or investigative aspect to focus on the complex interactions between its main characters. Love and infatuation bind each one of them, making them vulnerable to regrettable choices, without stating out loud. 

Maya’s conflict takes second place to her need to survive and bring up her child, and Kapoor Khan does an efficient job of underplaying her character’s emotions. She is also sans make up, looking weather beaten in parts, fitting in naturally in the cold climate. 

While keeping the mystery around her character intact is central to this story, perhaps adding a few layers to Maya would have been enriching, leading to more empathy. 

Varma plays a conversational character efficiently, keeping the policeman light. In the original material, called the Galileo series, the investigator is a physics-trained academic genius. Varma’s character, Karan, is just a smart cop. Ahlawat shines in this cast of adept actors with an understated performance that is both layered and credible. Be it his body language, costumes, or his way of addressing life’s challenges through mathematics and logic, the actor brilliantly adapts this character which has previously been essayed in both Chinese and Korean cinema and TV.  Watch out for a scene when he is ordering his lunch at Maya’s cafe, shy and overwhelmed at the task of speaking with her. 

Like all of Ghosh’s films, there are quirky elements—like sudden kung fu scenes—that are more about tributes than believable touches. With two natural performers—Ahlawat and Varma—sparring with each other, these elements work well too. 

There are portions where the editing and narrative end scenes abruptly. If this is deliberate, to keep hint at clues and engage the discerning viewer with the whodunnit, it is not very well done. 

The film also ends hastily, delivering a surprise only in the last few minutes. The story would have evolved with greater clarity had the ending been fleshed out better. 

Having said that, as whodunnits go, Jaane Jaan gets its actors to become realistic characters and uses its hilly and shrouded environment to heighten a classic emotional mystery. Worth a weekend watch for sure. 

Rating: 4/5