Jana Nayagan movie review: Vijay’s last film unravels under pressure of being Vijay’s last film

Jana Nayagan, directed by H. Vinoth, is a hat tip to Anil Ravipudi’s Telugu hit Bhagavanth Kesari. While foundation of the film remains the same, the story is reworked into a political action thriller about democracy, modern warfare and institutional corruption in Jana Nayagan. On paper, that sounds like a filmmaker adopting a solid emotional core and building it into something bigger. On screen, it plays like two different films stitched together, neither of which fully works.

The story follows Vetri Kondan, a former police officer played by Vijay, who is drawn into conflict when a young girl close to him, played by Mamitha Baiju, faces a threat that traces back to a powerful international arms dealer named Phoenix, played by Bobby Deol.

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The first half broadly follows the Bhagavanth Kesari template. Vijay is introduced as a prisoner. An action sequence in a jail establishes his physical dominance. Then comes a lengthy introduction for Bobby Deol’s Phoenix, and this is where the film’s problems begin. Vinoth constructs an elaborate backstory involving civil wars in Africa, terrorist attacks from Pakistan, drone warfare, robots fighting humans, and a confrontation between the villain and his own alter ego. The VFX in these sequences is poor given this is a big production that had three years to get it right. The AI-generated visuals look unfinished; the action sequences that are supposed to establish Phoenix as a global threat end up making him look like a character from a video game.

Where the film works, and it does work in stretches, is where Vijay is allowed to be himself. There are a handful of elevation moments that land the way they are supposed to, where the background score swells, the crowd erupts, and for a few seconds, the film remembers what it is supposed to be.

Mamitha Baiju, in a role that could easily have been decorative, brings real weight to her scenes and delivers one of the more affecting performances in the film. Pooja Hegde as Kayal does what the script allows, which is not much. Prakash Raj and Gautham Vasudev Menon add texture in their supporting roles, though neither is given enough screen time to fully register.

Bobby Deol is given far more to work with here and does far less with it. The character is written as a man consumed by power and greed, but the writing never finds a register that works. He oscillates between being menacing and unintentionally funny. The dialogue and staging do not help. And by the time the film asks you to take Phoenix seriously as a threat to Indian democracy, you have already spent too long watching him talk to his own reflection to register it.

This is the same H. Vinoth who made Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru in 2017, a film built on meticulous research, restrained performances and a villain who felt genuinely dangerous because the film respected the audience’s intelligence. Watching the Phoenix track in Jana Nayagan, it is difficult to reconcile the two films as the work of the same director.

Anirudh Ravichander, once again, is the glue. His background score is the single most consistent element of the film. In the elevation moments, he lifts scenes that would otherwise fall flat. In the quieter stretches, he provides the emotional undertow that the screenplay does not always earn. The “Perae Varalaru” song has already become a cultural marker of Vijay’s political career, and hearing it in context carries a charge that transcends the film itself. But even Anirudh cannot compose his way out of sequences that are fundamentally poorly conceived.

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Sathyan Sooryan’s cinematography has its moments, particularly in the outdoor sequences and the action blocks that do not rely on CGI. But the indoor scenes and the VFX-heavy portions look flat and underdeveloped. Pradeep E Ragav’s editing is uneven. At 183 minutes, the film is too long, and the bloat is most visible in the second act, where the political subplots pile up without cohering into a clear narrative direction.

The political content, which Vinoth has spoken about extensively in interviews, is present but blunt. The film makes its point about democracy, about the abuse of power, about the need for leaders who serve the people rather than themselves. But it makes it the way a campaign speech does, directly, loudly, and without much room for interpretation. The dialogue is heavy with political declarations. Some of them will play well in front of charged audiences on opening day. Few of them will hold up to a second viewing.

The deeper problem with Jana Nayagan is not any single bad decision. It is the weight of trying to be everything at once. This is a film that wants to be a women empowerment drama, a political thriller, a modern warfare spectacle, a family sentiment piece, a mass action entertainer, a campaign video, a farewell tribute, and a statement about Indian democracy. The reason it tries to be all of those things is not artistic ambition, it is the pressure that comes with making a Vijay film in 2026. When the man on screen is not just an actor but a sitting CM, the film cannot just tell a story, it has to serve the image. Every frame has to reinforce the idea that this man is larger than the screen he is standing on. So the heroism gets louder.

Jana Nayagan movie review: Vijay shines but the film fails to catch up.

What exists instead is a film where every character, every subplot and every action sequence bends toward one purpose: to make Vijay look like a god. The problem is, Vijay does not need that. He never has. His best performances, in Theri, in Nanban, in Ghilli, worked because the films trusted him to be human first and heroic second. Jana Nayagan does the opposite. It builds the pedestal before it builds the person.

The cameos by Atlee, Lokesh Kanagaraj, Nelson Dilipkumar and Anirudh in the film are fan-service moments that will generate cheers but do not add to the story. The MGR references throughout the film are pointed and will be read politically by everyone in the audience, as they are meant to be.

At its best, Jana Nayagan reminds you why Vijay has been a star for 30 years. He has a presence that does not require good writing to hold a screen. And in the moments where the film lets him be vulnerable, particularly with Mamitha, he shows the kind of restraint that his earlier performances in films like Theri and Nanban had in abundance. But a farewell film should not make you grateful for the moments that work. It should make you grateful for the whole thing. Jana Nayagan does not do that. It gives you Vijay at his most committed, inside a film that does not match his effort. And it gives you a political message that is so crooked but delivered with the subtlety of a campaign rally.

Vijay deserved better. His fans, who waited six months through a censor battle, a court case, a nationwide leak and an A certificate, deserved better. And H Vinoth, who proved with Theeran that he is capable of making a smart, grounded film, should have known better.

The theatres will be full today. The celebrations will happen, the milk will be poured, the crackers will burst. But once the noise settles and the opening-day euphoria fades, what remains is a film that tried to be the last word on Vijay and ended up being just another word.