Jailer - No Country for Old Men

Jailer

2023, Tamil

Directed by Nelsen

Stars Rajinikanth, Vinayakan, Yogi Babu, Ramya Krishna, Sunil, Mirnaa Menon

Cameos by Tamannah, Mohanlal, Naga Babu, Jackie Shroff

Mohan's Measure ⭐⭐⭐⭐

As we age, the world darkens, perhaps in preparation for what we fear will be an inevitable darkness which lies ahead. The Legend now joins the club of old men, perhaps more by choice, as it takes only a little makeup to make him look young on the screen.

With the young man flashbacks only minutes long, Jailer remains the story of an old man who finds his solution in the darkness of his own mind, a return to the days where he employed criminal tactics to maintain discipline in a high security prison. His morality, his faith, is put aside to a sadistic enjoyment of killing villains. In a telling scene, he is having a slow, quiet, dining table conversation with his family, while he is lunging a knife through a man's throat. 

His nemesis is an effective counterpart. Vinayakan portrays him as a psycho killer, his teeth stained with the blood of those whom he has bludgeoned to death.  He is somehow tied to illegal antiquities, but he is less interested in this than in satiating the madness that owns him.

This is by far the darkest movie Rajinikanth has ever acted in, and is arguably one of his best. He is an actor who seems to find his zone in characters who live above the law. This anti-hero element of his characters is what makes us to love him in movies like Basha and Padayappa. In Jailer, he takes such a character to new heights of grandeur. 

But, like in all successful Rajinikanth movies, there is room for humor, cynicism, even some self-effacing slapstick, offered to us by Yogi Babu and a cast of others. Even Tamannah's famous item song is more humorous than enticing, poking fun at the increasingly provocative nature of Tollywood.

But what we leave with is less entertainment than pathos, a bittersweet longing for a happy ending. But that was a different time, and a different Rajinikanth.