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When destiny offers one more shot at redemption, do you choose do go down the books as a statistic or as a legend?

Not an easy question to resolve in an age where digits decide credibility and ‘guts’ is a boomer slang.

Now, pushed forth is a film that would’ve ideally released to deserved fanfare and buzz if the pandemic didn’t have the omicron leg.

A story based around 80’s Punjab, set with a murky December aesthetic, Jersey is primarily the tale of a middle class family’s hopes waging war against its ceaseless financial crisis. Cricket is it’s pretext, in a world that we see through the prism of the protagonist Arjun Talwar.

The proposition of this film is sliced out of the heart.

Living as a shell of his former self, Arjun Talwar confronts existential crisis beyond his play-field. A maverick who could’ve been a walking-talking billion dollar cheque in his line of work has been lessened to realms a pauper, fretted at by mostly everyone he bumps into.

Once a raging lover who now fails the same woman as her husband.

He has been written off by everyone. Except one human. His son. The only entity with flesh and bones that carries a soul in Arjun’s erstwhile barren land of critics. A child who wants a hero, but given their humble stretches, can’t afford to have one.

Hereon, is the resurgence of this Clint Eastwood-esque gunslinger out for one last fight. War torn, slower than before, nursing a few ailments. But still swings and strokes like a mercenary out for blood.

Solely because his hero-trailing son hasn’t seen his father do his thing, in his prime. He hasn’t heard a stadium packed with people chant his father’s name like a miracle spell. He is yet to be enlightened by the strong legacy he’s born into. Upto this moment, the story and it’s onset are blockbuster material. Box office gold. But, and it’s a monumental but. All of the above sounds great on paper. The unfolding somehow gets a bit lost in translation.

Jersey is a good film that could’ve been a classic. It is not for some quite glaring reasons.

First, the art direction is sub-par. The film doesn’t belong to the 80’s aesthetically. The characters look nothing like folks from that era nor do the places.

Second, the cricket. The writing team seems to have lost a little bit of objectivity here.

Arjun Talwar is a hybrid of MS Dhoni meets Sehwag meets A cricketer from EA Sports Cricket 2007.

While the cricketing action is fun and watching such stroke play makes for snack-able consumption, it is multiple notes higher from how the rest of the film is treated. The cricket sequences are devised to book Arjun Talwar look like Thanos high on redbull. But soon it becomes almost indigestible to see a man reach triple tons in most matches off sixes as fashionably as Himesh Reshammiya offering songs in his unreleased album to contestants on Indian Idol.

Arjun, the batsman is overpowered in a film that otherwise is pretty grounded in its reciprocity. The cricket doesn’t fit the narrative, treatment or viewing experience. That was a bummer. Won’t call it lazy writing. But definitely not thought through.

The third shortcoming is Jersey‘s length. It didn’t need to be 166 minutes long. A film that long needed a sub-genre or an ancillary chunk to shoulder the narrative up to the end. But most subplots of the film begin with great promise but get lost or fizzled out in the shuffle.

The couple’s arc is criminally and annoyingly underdeveloped.

All these nodal points of the film begin with gusto and soon but turn preys of overcrowding in the content streamline. The team, for some reason opts to drag Arjun’s journey back to redemption without equipping it with enough emotional fuel and warrant to skyrocket. Hence, it boils down to a just a man hitting bowlers all across the park. Why?

The viewer seems to care less now. For too much of anything is bad. Cricket is this film’s lag. Cricket, after a point, brings monotony and makes the story one-dimensional. It’s no longer a father out to be his son’s hero. It’s a mixtape of many feelings yet none explored.

It’s like a Gully rap track where a chunk of meaningful lines are followed by fillers and hooks like hard hai, kadak hai, cheer daale, faad daale, kya baba, bole toh rawas, full khatri, ek number billa item, jagah pe jalwe. You get the drill. If you can’t hold the audiences pulse, you’ll lose them no matter how strong your go-home or climax is.

And, that’s what bugs me.

Jersey is a good film. It has a classic climax. One that springboards the story into a broader perspective. But by then, the film loses so much of its steam that the heart wrench doesn’t connect. What could’ve been a weeping fest, lends a slight lump in the throat at best.

This film deserved a better send-off. Given it is a remake, the makers should’ve gone all in and rebooted some stuff.

Jersey is a missed opportunity at making a legit coming of age story for late bloomers, folks past their supposed prime.

It is a good film because the actors are in sublime form.

Shahid Kapoor has delivered his most spiritually evolved performance to date. The restraint in Arjun is something that only comes with age, experience and a taste of life’s varied fervour. Him doing this role is serendipity.

For 20 years, Kapoor has undergone the raw material fine tuning process. This is the finished product. This is the actor Shahid Kapoor was always supposed to be. From the cute new kid to a full grown man who gets the job done, Kapoor’s range has broken through.

His best scene you ask? The one where he smokes with his father Pankaj Kapur. No matter who you are, smoking with your big man like you’re friends is a tall ask for the greatest of performers. That’s my pick. Shahid may not raked the biggest moolah with Jersey but he needed this film to grow as a person.

Regardless of its flaws, Jersey is the jumping board that’ll catapult Shahid Kapoor into the next realm of possibilities as a performer.

Mrunal Thakur is a natural. If you sculpt a prototype female actor from scratch, she’d look and possess all the tools that Thakur has. Unlike Kapoor’s character, Thakur has a less meatier and lesser to-your face kicks added to her role but she smashes it with her sincerity, diligence and competence.

She is the kind of actor that the future of Hindi cinema should be built around. Mark my words, she will carry the industry by 2025. Given, the industry wakes up and smells the coffee.

Pankaj Kapur is no longer suited for superlatives. He by himself is a superlative. A role of this sort is automated within an actor of his calibre and stature. Watch Mr. Kapur’s act as an older iteration of himself in the later parts of the film and keep notice of his parting shot with moist eyes. That’s not simply acting. That’s study material.

I hope Ronit Kamra gets back to acting once his education is done and he’s all grown up. The boy reminded me of Baby Shahid Kapoor. The Little wonder has great promise. Plus he seems like a good human. Those eyes are very kind. He is the spinal cord of this film.

Jersey is not the greatest film ever made. It is heavily flawed. But what this film does is facilitate everyone involved to move to the next beyond. Made during the most strenuous time of the pandemic it shouldn’t have been half as good as it had turned out to be.

Mad props to the team’s reticence and commitment. When the backs were against the wall, they chose to step up and, sometimes, that counts more than numbers in an age where digits decide credibility. But ‘guts’ are no longer a boomer slang.

Jersey may not standout on the evaluation table of metrics and data. But alike it’s core concept, the film gave it’s team a doorway, another shot to sit back and reflect on that incongruous question – When destiny offers one more shot at redemption, do you choose do go down the books as a statistic or as a legend?