Jallikattu (Lijo Jose Pellissery, 2019): India

Reviewed by Jacob Baldwin. Viewed at AFI festival 2019.

When I walked in the theater to see Jallikattu, I knew from the film’s title that it would not be an ordinary film. Little did I know just how extraordinary the film turned out to be.
Jallikattu has many alien and foreign elements that are complete outside the realm of a typical action film, and at the same time it also possesses everything you come to love from a good action film. Jallikattu is fast paced, action packed, funny, and over the top. It also has an amazing, strange soundtrack, interesting, foreign prespectives, and a completely bizarre and ridiculous main plot.
It is cleverly edited; the opening shot immidiately captures the attention with a hypnotic, awesome landscape. The sound of a ticking clock compounds with the cinematography to put the audience into a trance.
From there the film jumps into full gear. A water buffalo escapes and begins to run amok in a small Indian village. The villagers initially are furious because of the loss of the meat, but soon the villagers fury turns into madness and finally chaos.
Director Lijo Jose Pellissery illustrates the lives of the poor villagers, incorporating back stories and side stories that weave into the main narrative of the raging wild water buffalo. The director is able to show the light, funny side of the villagers, which creates an interesting contrast to the end of the movie, where the villagers have regressed back into primitive cavemen behavior.
The film has impressive action sequences, some with hundreds of extras, which is impressive to see and adds to the overlying feeling of chaos. There are action sequences that are so ridiculous and over the top that they a really funny, and other action sequences that are extremely suspenseful and violent.
As a whole, the combination of hypnotic sound editing and cinematography is impressive. The slow descent of the villagers into madness is also very well done and eerie, reminiscent of the Lord of the Flies. The surreal ending is also I think a very appropriate and creepy cherry on top to this wild film.