Movie Review : No one killed Jessica

Rating : ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2
Genre : Drama
Year : 2011
Running time : 2 hours 16 minutes
Director : Raj Kumar Gupta
Cast : Rani Mukherjee, Vidya Balan, Neil Bhopalam, Mohammed Ayub
Kid rating : PG-15

NO ONE KILLED JESSICA (NOKJ) : TRUE-LIFE TALE !

As is well known NOKJ deals with the true-life murder of model Jessica Lall. Jessica, serving drinks at a posh Delhi night-club refused to serve drinks, after a certain time, to an arrogant Manu Sharma. Manu then took out a revolver and shot her at point blank range. After the murder Sharma, the son of a powerful government minister, was shielded by the law, and a case against him failed to bring about any justice for the slain girl and her family.

The case was re-opened only after NDTV took up a campaign against the obvious injustice and middle-class urban citizens signed petitions and held candle-light vigils to bring Jessica’s murderer to book. After a re-trial Sharma was declared guilty and sentenced to a life-term. There were reports though, that even later in jail, he was treated with a lenient hand.

In the film, some names have been changed, so the accused is now Manish Bharadwaj instead of Manu Sharma. Rani Mukherjee plays Meera Gaity, an intrepid investigative reporter for a news channel, and Vidya Balan plays Sabrina, Jessica’s sister.

Meera’s character is roughly based on Barkha Dutt, NDTV’s senior news editor. She appears to be a brasher, loud-mouthy version of Barkha, and as desi films require it, quite a bit prettier and well-dressed. Meera is going around doing her thing when she hears of the Lall murder case on television, and is surprised that Sharma gets away with murder, inspite of being in a packed night-club with several witnesses. Outraged, she decides to make the injustice a main story for the television channel, and persuades her boss to let her work on it.

Meanwhile Vidya as Sabrina is trying to re-appeal the verdict, and making the rounds to see why the witnesses backed out of speaking the truth. We see her struggle, in the face of rampant corruption, unhelpful officials, and an ineffectual justice system, trying to keep afloat her hopes of getting a rightful conviction for her slain sister. And we sympathize, knowing the laxity of the Indian law, when it comes to the rich and powerful.

NOKJ is not quite the super-slick film, but it does pass muster. It’s screen-play hangs a little loose. Direction is average, and the weak supporting cast doesn’t quite bring a sheen of reality. Both Rani and Vidya though, bring presence and vitality to their roles, and stop this film from being a superficial controversy-based film.

Before watching the film, I hadn’t expected much, since films based on such notorious cases rarely mirror the true angst of the tragedy. This one, fortunately, comes close to doing it, courtesy the two lead actresses. Also for all you MTV fans, you might actually see some familiar faces – Param Baidwan and Rahul Dwivedi of Splitsvilla fame are in this film as supporting actors. Param plays accused Manish’s friend and Rahul has a couple of seconds on-screen as a potential witness in the case.

This one is fairly watchable. For all you Netflix-ers, this is now also available to stream.

Kidwise : The subject matter, obviously, is not suitable for kids. Apart from that, the film is not un-naturally violent or sleazy. Might serve for children 15 years and older.