Jawan: Shah Rukh Khan and his embodiment of the 'Angry Young Man' once created by Amitabh Bachchan

Prakash Mehra’s Zanjeer, written by Hindi cinema’s most iconic writer pair, Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, and starring Amitabh Bachchan in the central character, turns 50 this year. It marked the birth of what we call as the Angry Young Man. Who’s an angry young man? For these fictional characters we related to, they were the unfortunate and unfair victims of the brutal circumstances. And in these five decades, the system doesn’t seem to have improved much, it only seems to have decayed. The latest angry young man of Hindi films is Shah Rukh Khan ’s Azad from Atlee’s blockbuster Jawan , which released on September 7. At first, going by the promos and promotions, Khan felt like the antagonist of the story, especially when he mouthed the hero-villain dialogue. When you discover what the makers have in store for us, you realise he’s nothing but a victim and not a villain. He asks a minister to solve a puzzle and says the number 10281, and the entire room is left puzzled; this is the number of farmers that have died by suicide in the film and Azad is angry, agitated, and shattered. There are many other crippling issues Jawan deals with, and Khan and his army of infuriated women, try to strike a balance between victimhood and vigilantism. They talk about corruption in hospitals, defense, and government, with the final speech of Azad talking about voting responsibly. All these sermons would’ve acted like sleeping pills had it not been for Atlee’s treatment of the film as an action thriller, and Khan’s dual role. He also plays the father named Vikram Rathore, who may have lost his memory but can still break bones with ease and swag, and lots of style too. Both the father and son have been wronged at some point in their lives, and joining hands only means two angry men for the price of one. Shah Rukh Khan has repeatedly said in his interviews how he always aspired to be an action star and romance happened by chance. With Pathaan and Jawaan, he’s bringing back the era of the Angry Young Man, and also grinning and smiling at the moolah that follows at the box-office. Irony nicely done!