Jhansi Season 2 review: Another season, same ol’ result

1.5/5

Story:

Jhansi and Dhruva are mysteriously kidnapped by a group of henchmen. When the kidnapper Ameesha reveals her motive, Jhansi comes closer to finding answers from her past. A notorious gangster Caleb is after Jhansi’s life and the cop Sakshi lands a key link between Jhansi and a series of murders. Will Sakshi arrest Jhansi? What connects Caleb to Jhansi and her aides?

Review:

Jhansi Season 2, the second instalment to the crime thriller headlined by Anjali, is finally here. Its messy predecessor ended abruptly when the titular character struggles to identify mysteries from her past that interfere with her present. The struggle remains the same, both for Jhansi and the viewer in the second season. The show is all over the place – too many characters, pointless subplots, a directionless narrative and you’ve very little reason to await the next episode.

While it’s crucial to watch the first season to make heads or tails of the story, every new season in any show must have its own, distinct journey to resonate with a viewer. Watching Jhansi Season 2 is akin to eating the leftovers from a meal you didn’t really like in the first place. The series is so obsessed with going between Jhansi’s past and present but is clueless about what it wants to communicate. The narrative is almost stagnant.

Jhansi would’ve worked if the director made the viewer understand why this ‘unfinished business’ is so important for his pivotal character. There’s no hope within the subplots too; they’re so unimaginative and it’s impossible to empathise with any of the characters or their forced conflicts. Be it Jhansi’s shortlived romance with a client or her connection with Amsa Begum’s family, the sequences are filmed with indifference and the acting is devoid of any enthusiasm.

A couple of scenes where the adults try to explain redemption and vengeance to children are in poor taste. The characters change slangs and accents at the drop of the hat without any consistency and the show keeps jumping from one event to the other aimlessly. The threads on Jhansi’s challenges with her sexuality and the equation with her partner Sankeeth aren’t developed well either. And amidst this cluelessness, one can’t fathom the creator’s hurry to lay a foundation for another season.

For a show to work, one must be aware of its USPs and why a viewer must care for it. Was the intention to throw light on the human trafficking racket or the internal trauma of Jhansi? Should you watch it for the thrills, the action sequences, the intriguing characters or the performances? Is the narration arresting enough or is there attention to detail? Jhansi, beyond anything else, is a bloated piece of mainstream cinema, masked as a web series.

Screenwriters must respect audiences when they write for the digital medium all the more, you can’t let things pass easily and call it cinematic liberty show after show. And it’s tiring to see filmmakers extending the subplots of their unused feature film scripts and passing it off as two seasons in a web show. It’s no longer enough for Anjali to be called a powerhouse of talent; she needs to be wiser with her script choices and respect her worth.

Jhansi brings together several talents, young and experienced – Chandini Chowdary, Raj Arjun, Samyukta Hornad, Aadarsh Balakrishna, Talluri Rameshwari, Aberaam Verma and Chaitanya Sagiraju – but none get anything meaty to justify their presence. Most of the locations look like set pieces and the editing is a complete mess, with too many tonal inconsistencies. The absence of any effort to understand the crime world is another major reason why the proceedings remain so unaffecting.

It’s hard to believe that Thiru, who made a compelling Naan Sigappu Manithan and the passable Samar, could make such a mediocre actioner.

Verdict:

Jhansi Season 2 doesn’t learn from the mistakes of the earlier instalment and is as dull and cluttered. The writing and the execution are all over the place, while the acting is strictly mediocre. The show neither thrills nor engages.