JL 50 (2020, Movie Review)

JL50 was made as a movie starring Abhay Deol (Shantanu), Pankaj Kapur (Professor Subroto Das), Ritika Anand (Bihu Ghosh), Rajesh Sharma (Gaurango) and Piyush Mishra (Biswajit Chandra Mitra)  and converted into a mini web series later. Begins on the note where few kids are playing football up the hills, suddenly lightning strikes and it becomes overcast in a matter of second, everyone on the field stops and looks up at the sky and saw a shadow of a plane passing over the football field. Next day, news of the plane’s crash in the northern part of West Bengal, and of another missing plane set the stage for interest. The crashed plane, JL 50, went ‘missing’ about 35 years ago on August 20, 1984, and its crash site has just been found in 2019. Meanwhile, the missing plane, AO 26, is seemingly hijacked by a radical communist group. The case of the crashed plane, and why it’s so far away from its flight course is to be investigated by CBI’s blue-eyed boy Shantanu and his colleague Gaurango. Meanwhile, the hijackers of AO 26 are demanding the release of their leader from jail in exchange for the hostages. Will the government release their leader? Will the flight AO26 be rescued? Will Shantanu get to know the truth behind the flight which went missing 35 years ago? You will get all the answers in this thriller.

The makers have to be applauded here for bringing up a concept that has remained unexplored in Indian cinema. To its credit, the concept of time travel has been explained & delivered in a simplified way. Time travel, wormholes, parallel universes are not something Indian movies have handled well. One of the reasons could be the money required for creating believable VFX. Another could be, even when Indian movies tackle science fiction it ends up being a masala musical. The series begins well & is fascinating until the mystery starts to unfold. I liked the twist towards the end. Set in picturesque West Bengal the show does well in terms of the mood & cinematography. Among the performances, Abhay Deol is brilliant as an investigating CBI officer who is dealing with troubled past marital issues. Pankaj Kapoor is excellent as the professor of quantum physics & it was good to see him back after a long time. Rajesh Sharma is strictly okay & didn't have much to do. Piyush Mishra is a bit disappointing as he appears to be informal here.

The best things about JL 50 are the cast and the location. Kolkata, the first capital city of British India is a location tailor-made for time travel stories. With its yellow Ambassador taxi cabs and narrow inner-city streets, it a city still caught in its past. Paused at the edge of detachment back to an older age, it is easy to recreate Calcutta from thirty-forty years ago in the current Kolkata. The makers of JL 50 make use of this chameleonic aspect of Calcutta to their advantage.

I found it a bit underwhelming for the first time strangely I liked it more on the second viewing as my expectations on the first attempt were very high. Much better sci-fi film of Bollywood, I think it is the best series in Bollywood ever in terms of the direction in terms of acting and all those parameters in cinema. This is the absolute best and wonderful series. The best part is that how they connect the concept of time travel to our rich Indian History which shows that Bollywood has so much potential as our rich history has a plethora of this type of concept moreover the series is absolutely a fire the suspense in this movie is at the next level and this is the shining example of growing Bollywood and this type of series must be appreciated and I appreciate Mr.Vyas taking up the challenge of making an Indian sci-fi series. With an open-ended ending, I hope he will be back with more and make sure to include Abhay Deol - he is more than half the reason I enjoyed this series as much as I did. I recommend this one for its concept and an honest attempt in the sci-fi genre. It has its heart in the right place and I found it to be a satisfying watch.

A really good effort at making something worth to watch, especially if you're interested in sci-fi thrillers, A web series purely clean, no nudity or something like that, and should be binged watch, as it has only 4 episodes, that too of 30 mins. The concept is interesting, the direction is crisp, actors are phenomenal, Abhay Deol had also done a fair job. Overall it's an interesting treat to watch in lockdown, though I think it could be better with some scenes and I thought as if it had been wrapped too early and too short, nevertheless, watch it for all the underrated yet Capable artists, go ahead!