Jil, Jung, Juk on the run - a still from the movie.A pole vault to year 2020. Blue-haired, son of a gun (gun being Nasser), Jil, who is a small time gambler/crook finds himself on an escapade with whack-job Jung and oddball Juk.
To call Jil Jung Juk a dark comedy could only be justified to some extent, for it doesn't employ the noir elements (popularised by Korean and Hollywood masters) like the brilliance of violence, satirical narrative or even a style statement making cast to their fullest standing.
What it does instead, is build a comedy; in pink haze, we see sparks of the rudimentary features of the genre, but director Dheeraj Vaidy seems to have not wanted to graduate from humour to multi-disciplinary cinema.
The awesome threesome in another still from the movie.'Jil Jung Juk' team on a rollicking video with Put Chutney
The premise is promising—Nanjil Sivaji (Siddharth), Jung Lingam (Sanath Reddy) and Jaguar Jak (Avinash), a team of three, is smuggling cocaine. And backed by some excellent background score that takes over as an active bystander when dialogues fall short of wittiness, the journey picks up pace and vitality as it surges ahead till break-point.
Siddharth is also the producer of the movie.As Jil says, "To accomplish one grand feat, one has to do the nine odd jobs on the way", more than the grand feat here, the assorted means of hilarity lined up points to the fact that there were some creative minds at work. Starting with the Chennai Tamizh that flows uninhibitedly out of the lead cast, the butterfly effect theory (although slightly overdone), haggling with a vendor after holding him at gun-point, Jung revealing that he's a fan of 'Jaishankar' and 'Jessi Hunger', a Malayali doctor named 'Kotalakal' (rings a bell?) offering meaningful syllables to mean 'prostate' in cancer variants, and Juk's comic-story like father folktale, where he runs a bus called 'Soppanasundari'—are all effective as page-turners of glossy pulp fiction.
Radha Ravi in 'Jil Jung Juk'.However, after the first half, the narrative gropes in the dark. With actors like Radha Ravi and Amarendran grappling with less-than exciting goon roles (and ill-fitting clothes) and the awesome threesome running out of jokes make it a tedious trudge thereon.
Siddharth in 'Jil Jung Juk'.The most loyal of ingredients in this explosive mix is the music and background score by Vishal Chandrasekhar. From inventive jazz, the electro pop 'red rode-u' where the composer has pulled in fellow composers Santhosh Narayanan and Sean Roldan to sing, to the addictive, lyrical absurdity carnival that is the soundtrack of the film, it's finger-tapping time on theatre seat handles all the way. A vibrant colour palette, courtesy Shreyaas Krishna, accentuates the fictional fantasy get-up.
Was Jil Jung Juk trying its hand at dark comedy for real, or was it a calculated spoof of the genre? Either way, if the pink fog clears, the boys can think of another gig, but of course, more goofy.
Onmanorama rating: 2.5/5
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