A story of two friends Billu and Baggu, who get caught up in debt with the local mafia, led by the King. At the same time, another guy Ali has his own plans to kidnap the King for his own motives. Along with this, there are two women who each have their own motives. All are connected to Dara, the henchman who is stuck between collecting the money and keeping his control and fear over the city. These three story lines all connect at one point and causes confusion and a series of twists, in other words, a jalaibee.
Ok, let’s get the good stuff out of the way.
1. Jalaibee is no doubt a very high standard technical movie (it was shot with the same camera that was used for Gravity, Skyfall and Iron Man 3). The cinematography was world class.
2. The art work, by Babrus Khan in Lahore, was brilliant (even if it reminds you of the art work in Kill BIll) and used very effectively to trace the back stories.
3. That 1963 yellow Ford Mustang!! What a brilliant car. I want that car.
Unfortunately, there were so many glaring errors that one couldn’t help but feel sorry for the movie (it won’t make much a of a difference because the movie is a super hit anyways!).
1. The acting is bad all over. The only decent actor was Zhalay Sarhadi as the bar dancer. Wiqar Ali Khan, Adnan Jafar, Sabeeka Imam, Ali Safina, Danish Taimoor…all need to go back to acting school.
2. The script, the script, the script. With so many loopholes, one quickly had to switch their brains off to get through the movie.
3. The action, the one item song, the comedy was all lacklustre. No oomph, no hype, no fizz…just like a flat coke drink.
Even though we went to see the movie because we support Pakistani cinema, Jalaibee just didn’t cut it out for us. Zinda Bhaag was way better, and for that matter Waar was a lot better.
Having said that, we should still be proud that a movie like Jalaibee can be made on the same level as any Hollywood/ Bollywood movie. The effort and the time spent to make this movie needs to be lauded– so a very well done to the makers of the movie. However, I would also recommend to the makers of the movie, to focus on the script next time.
2 out of 5
Mansour Ahsan 