Review: Jab Tak Hai Jaan
Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Katrina Kaif, Anushka Sharma
Director: Yash Chopra
Indian Express Rating: **1/2
The title of Yash Chopra’s swan-song has a retrospective bitter-sweetness to it : the veteran director did not live to see his film in the theatres. ‘Jab Tak Hai Jaan’ has released, in old YRF tradition, on Deepawali, but what the title manages to say pithily takes the fllm nearly three very long hours, and the pay-off isn’t as sweet as it should have been.
The story may be set in today’s times, but the theme is vintage Yash Chopra, wherein true love happens only once in a lifetime, and it trumps all else. Samar Anand ( SRK) has two lives, and two ladies. He oscillates between London and Leh, and between the rich miss Meera Thapar ( Kaif) and the spunky go-getter Akira Rai ( Sharma) : the London-Meera axis happens pre-interval, with Samar shuttling between being a busker with a yen for sufi ditties, a waiter and a supermarket assistant, and romancing his pretty lass on the side. In the second half, he plays a dishy stubbled bomb disposal expert in Ladakh and the Kashmir valley, being stalked by gutsy Dilli girl Akira who is dying to be a reporter with the Discovery channel.
Aditya Chopra’s story had potential for a solidly detailed telling, and it should have turned into a crackling romance in his father’s seasoned hands. But the film bumps along the twists that are telegraphed miles ahead, the plot-holes loom
