Now into the second week, the alert seems to have been sounded: Stay away. A stray Shah Rukh fan with time to kill still makes it to the movie hall to watch Jawan. I did. There were just about 20 viewers in a cold theatre that could easily seat over 500. A bone-chilling experience, therefore.

It is a remarkable movie in that it is unremarkable in virtually every department. The story is neither original nor imaginatively told and is tenuously stitched together. The themes it touches on—relevant to the times—are dealt with in an overly simplistic manner and the plot falls flat. The dialogue writer wasn’t troubled much. The music director had a busy outing and that is as much as can be said. I figured there were lyrics thanks to the on-screen subtitles, but keeping track wasn’t worth it. The action sequences had contact fights and guns blazing but never the suspense or the menace that makes for edge-of-the-seat viewing. A quick word about the women’s jail where a fair bit of the action takes place—every care was taken to ensure it didn’t feel like one, and the place at times had the cheery ambience of a bustling college.

Shah Rukh Khan in an out-and-out action film is worth mentioning. Not the romancing hero here, with youthful looks and shampooed hair billowing in the breeze. As our action hero with a shaggy, grubby look, he holds much of the screen time and does fine, but the role doesn’t require him to strain his thespian muscles. The women in the film manage to make their presence felt in the limited screen time they have.

I thought I would eventually reach the redeeming parts of the film. I have reached the end. So I guess that is it.