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HomeNewsTrendsEntertainmentJaane Jaan review: Jaideep Ahlawat and Vijay Varma are sufficiently creepy in this watchable thriller
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Jaane Jaan review: Jaideep Ahlawat and Vijay Varma are sufficiently creepy in this watchable thriller

Kareena Kapoor’s streaming debut is upstaged by the creepy men she is pursued by in this suitably twisted thriller.

September 21, 2023 / 14:26 IST
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Jaane Jaan starring Kareena Kapoor Khan, Jaideep Ahlawat and Vijay Varma is adapted from Japanese author Keiga Higashino’s novel The Devotion of Suspect X. (Screen grab/Netflix)

In a recurring sequence from Netflix’s Jaane Jaan, ‘Teacher’ played by Jaideep Ahlawat has a duel with one of his students. Both try to snatch a coin, shared by the intimate space between their open palms. “Tumhara kaam sikke ko bachana hai, mujhe haraana nahi,” he tells the student. It’s a silly little game that is repeated until it becomes the metaphorical convoy for a thriller’s ambiguous emotional core. Sometimes the only way to save something you truly love, is to step away from it. Love and lust form the ballast of this sufficiently eerie mystery that though underhanded in terms of direction, manages to just about entertain if not enthrall.

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Set in misty Kalimpong, Jaane Jaan brings together a troika of brilliant actors. Kareena Kapoor plays Maya D’Souza, a single mother, trying to rebuild her life away from a salacious history. This history arrives at her doorstep in the form of her abusive former husband, Ajit, played with trademark broodiness by Saurabh Sachdeva. An altercation with this pest from the past ends in a crime.

It just so happens that Maya is also neighbours with the aforementioned teacher, a creepy balding Ahlawat, who practices genius mathematics and indigenous karate. It’s an implausible combination that the actor’s discomforting body language, his unsettling gaze manages to commit to the reality of this unlikely world.