Jai Bhim Review

T. J. Gnanavel's legal drama is based on a 1993 case fought by K. Chandru, a lawyer who later sat on the Madras High Court. Rajakannu and Sengeni, an Irula couple who earn their living catching rats and snakes for landowners, are poor, tribal and therefore convenient: after a jewellery theft at a village leader's house, police beat Rajakannu's relatives, drag him in, and then announce that their prisoners have escaped.

The custody scenes are among the most unsparing in recent Indian cinema, and the film refuses to cut away from them. Once Suriya's Chandru files a habeas corpus petition it becomes a procedural, and a gripping one: a fake phone call from Kerala is taken apart, an honest inspector general played by Prakash Raj reopens the inquiry, and the cover-up unravels witness by witness. Suriya plays Chandru with welcome restraint, but the film belongs to Lijomol Jose's Sengeni, who is never reduced to a victim, and to K. Manikandan, who spent a long stretch with Irula families to prepare.

The police villains are thinly drawn, and the star lawyer's heroics tilt it toward a saviour story. It went straight to Prime Video, and the title is taken from an Ambedkarite slogan.