'Jaat' review: Heads roll and restraint dies in action drama

Jaat is big on beheading. Correction: Jaat is huge .

Telugu director Gopichand Malineni’s Hindi debut loves, worships, fusses over its decapitations. Head-cutting is how the gangster Ranatunga (Randeep Hooda) and his posse terrorise their victims, and head-cutting is how Jaat hopes to convince audiences that the hero Baldev (Sunny Deol) is up against some very ugly types.

Ranatunga, his wife Bharati (Regina Cassandra), his brother Somulu (Vineet Kumar) and glowering hoodlums with wild hair and wildly swinging accents rule over a lawless patch of Andhra Pradesh. Baldev wanders into Ranatunga’s turf by accident, but only after their respective connection to the Ramayana epic has been established.

While Ranatunga has arrived in India from Sri Lanka, Baldev walks into the frame to the throb of “Jai Shri Ram” techno beats. Baldev soon proves that he is as merciless as he is god-like, bleeding for the villagers being oppressed by Ranatunga while also ensuring that blood flows freely.

The film is nasty, brutish and long. The 153-minute Jaat is most alert and alive in its elaborately choreographed action set pieces, in which gravity, restraint and logic are skillfully slaughtered as surely as Ranatunga’s men.

Miraculously armed with a UA16+ certificate, Jaat sets itself up in direct contest with previous ultraviolent Adults-only films such as Animal, Kill and Marco. The...