Changeover: Jailer 2 (2026)

We're in Wayne Media. Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Changeover, otherwise known as the crossover show between the CultureCast and the Projection Booth. I am your host, one of your hosts, Chris Dashew, of the. CultureCast, not the Projection Booth. I would never claim to be the host of the Projection Booth, because the man who's the host of the Projection Booth is here with me.

He's a fan of Rajnikanth Azamai. I don't know if he stood up and cheered when his name came up on screen. I don't know. I'm going to ask him, though. He is the host of the Projection Booth.

Mike White. Coffee cancelled. Good God. Hook them. Oh, my Lord.

Mike, did you stand up and cheer? Did you stand up and cheer? No, I didn't stand up. Did other people stand up and cheer? Maybe I was kind of towards the front of the lower.

No one was loud enough in your theater to like, there were people when superstar Rajni came on screen. People were literally cheering and clapping. Oh, yeah. No, I was cheering and clapping. Yeah, OK.

But not just him. I'm not saying him like when it was the, you know, literally the lettering at the beginning of the movie. People were like, oh, yeah. And that little like extra before the superstar came up. Yeah, yeah.

It wasn't like the 50th anniversary one that we saw with Cooley. But yeah, it was pretty cool, too. Yeah. So ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, if you don't know what we're alluding to or whom we're alluding to on this episode of Changeover, we're talking about a film that just came out. We didn't go see Street Fighter.

Mike and I were trying to figure out why we didn't go see Street Fighter this weekend. Instead, we decided to go and spend what is effectively four fucking Street Fighter tickets between each of us or eight, I guess. Because what if we had gone and seen Street Fighter would have been like eight dollars a person. Instead, we went and saw a movie that was $ 20 a person. We're talking about a brand new Indian film that might be impossible to see in your area, but it'll undoubtedly be on Amazon prime.

I would assume here in the next year, because you can watch the first one on Amazon prime. And I realized we never talked about the first one. Did we? Yeah, we did for the Bollywood. Okay.

So it was on Bollywood cinema. So we'll, we'll talk about the first one here a little bit. Cause I think it's almost impossible to not just given what this movie is and given that it is a sequel. Yeah. But on this episode, we are talking about 2026's Nelson Dilip Kumar's directed Rajnikanth starring Jailer 2.

So, yes, if you are here listening to this podcast, you know why you're here. You're here because it is a brand new Rajnikanth film. And if you are a fan of Rajnikanth, it is a reason to go to the theater. Every time a new Rajnikanth film comes out, it is worth going to because he is still, well, they lead with it at the beginning of the movie. He is still a superstar, even now, 75 years on, which is just the craziest thing.

Oof. But he is reprising his role from the last film, from a film that came out, I guess you would say like during the pandemic-ish, 2023, tail end of the pandemic. Not Cooley, like Mike mentioned, but the original Jailer did come out in 2023. Rajnikanth reprising his role from that film as Tiger Muthuval Pandian, a.k.a. the titular Jailer. This film deals with the fallout from the first film.

There will be spoilers for the first. It's like impossible to talk about this movie without talking about the first film. Like even just the plot of this film is is more or less motivated by the first film. Rajnikanth returns to handle a blowback and fallout from the events of the first film, including the death of his son, whom was at the hands of him, Rajnikanth, and also the death of Varmin, who I went back and rewatched the first film for this man. I forgot how good he was in that first movie.

I mean, as good as Rajnikanth is right. He is, he is like, I'm not going to say better, but he makes, again, I think it's one of those, like, This movie's good, but I think it's going to probably be the problem with Jailer 2 in some respects, because if you watch Jailer 1... there's always going to be something missing in this movie. It's, it's the actor playing Varmin. That's what's missing, unfortunately. But yeah, this is a sequel to the first film, a continuation of the story.

And yeah, Rajnikanth returns as the main character. So Mike, I am so curious, some early thoughts about the second movie thoughts, maybe on the first movie a little bit. What was it like going to see this film where you went and saw it? Because we do kind of have to go out of our way in my case to go see it. I don't know.

What about in your case? Well, with me, I was a little pissed at my theater because they showed that they were going to show it last Wednesday and Thursday, but they didn't show that they were going to show it on Friday, Saturday, and even today, et cetera, into the next week. I don't know when the run is going to end, but I was tricked into thinking it was just running two days. So that meant that I had to then reschedule with you for a Wednesday recording. I had something else going on on Thursday.

So it just like Wednesday became the day to see it. At first, I thought it was only showing at like one theater kind of closer to where my mom lives. So it would have been more like a 40 hour or 40 hour, 40 minute drive down there. And then as we kept getting closer, I saw, oh, it's showing at my local theater. It's showing Wednesday, Thursday.

And then By the time I had tickets, I saw, oh, and it's showing into the weekend. Great. But I wasn't able to reschedule, and everything worked out very well. Seeing it first, well, not the first screening. I think it was the third screening on the first day.

One of the Tamil, no, was it Tamil screening? Because they had it in so many different languages, and I'm always like, well, I want to see it in whatever the original language is, so think i did that and i had a freaking blast so did everybody else in the theater um i think it was pretty darn full uh i don't there was definitely a seat between me and the next person but there weren't that many empty seats in the house and people were cheering like crazy i had a great time uh with all the cheering and just like clapping and whooping it up and I remember in the first movie, the first beheading that happens was the moment where I was just like, oh man, shit just got real. And I was just hooting and hollering with the rest of the audience.

This one, yeah, there's two beheadings in this one. So that's great. The sequel rules, right? Everything has to be bigger and better. So rather than just one beheading, there has to be two.

Though in this version, when I saw it, the heads were blurred out? Yes, mine as well. So strange. And it's also weird watching this without the cancer. You know, cigarettes will give you cancer or don't drink.

Tobacco is injurious to your health. Yes, yes. So it's strange watching that because, yeah, like you, I rewatched Jailer One before I went into this. And man, I just love that movie so much. And I love how it can just vacillate between tones so easily like you are in a deathly serious moment one moment and then it is late comedy a few minutes later it's heavy action a few minutes after that i mean it goes through so many different things and i'm there for it i just love that it feels like you are taken on a real ride when you watch one of these movies where you going all around these people's lives and All these characters keep getting introduced, but the first few times I watched Indian movies, I didn't know that that was going to be the case.

But now I'm kind of getting more into the rhythm, and especially having just seen Jailer 1, when I got to Jailer 2, I was like, okay, yeah, I kind of get where they're going to go with this, and be prepared for a couple of sharp left turns. Would it be fair to say that Nelson Dileep Kumar is a very Indian Coen brothers? Like it has that weird tonal, like it can live within these tonal palettes that are not so angularly drawn that you don't live inside of a box of a specific tone. I think that's very hard to do, right? Yeah, it feels like a lot of the Indian films that I've seen will have multiple tones to it.

They're trying to. Be all-encompassing is kind of the way I always look at it. They're kind of making sure... I mean, look, where I went and saw it, there were families, there were men and women. They're trying to make sure everybody.

Has something, right? Yeah. Every little kid, especially a little boy, loves watching people get the shit knocked out of them. Women, and again, women still find Rajnikanth attractive even now at 75, which, man, if I look like him when I'm 75, holy cow. And, you know, again, if you're a man of our age, it's like Rajnikanth is just a cool older guy.

Like, it's just, it has everything, and I think that that tonal kind of, expectation is there. Like these movies are not trying to be, I don't know if it's, I wouldn't say Indian films don't have a genre, but they kind of don't have a genre because this is a musical. It says it in the credits. Yeah. A musical by Nelson.

So, OK. And right. I mean, the music, and that was when I rewatched Jailer, I was like, oh, wow, yeah, the music really never stops. No, the music is a constant thread. Oh, yeah.

And I like with Jailer 2 that they took a lot of the themes from the first movie and kind of amped them up a little bit more, like the main Jailer theme. How they've got that section now where you hear all the people shouting at one point. I was like, oh, it's so good. And here's the thing. I wanted to ask you this.

So my girlfriend has noise sensitivity. And was your film overly loud? Oh, incredibly loud. When it started, the best part of the movie was how loud it was. I was just like, give me I know that it's maybe being a little much, but I was like, this is how you want to watch this movie is like kind of like just one decibel too loud.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, that was at first I was like, oh, I'm going to have to go out and complain. That was like, wait, no, no. Just give it a minute.

You know, like. We are in the opening movement of this symphony. It'll calm down in a second. And sure enough, it did. And by a few minutes in, I was like, all right, I'm used to the loudness of this and I'm here for it.

But yours was also loud then. Louder than a normal movie. Super loud. Was the trailer for, did you watch, do you have a trailer for like a horror movie in your lineup of trailers that was also really loud? No, I don't even think we had trailers before.

We had American trailers and Indian trailers. Oh, did we? No. Well, let's see. We have Maria Menounos doing her thing.

Autumn Schenck. What else did we have? We had something where I was like, this is kind of tone deaf for your audience. It wasn't like burgers or something like that. I can't remember what it was.

Oh my God. Can you imagine? But it was, it was something where I was like, Stan relief now. Right. Yeah.

Or fucking like British, you know, fucking twilling, you know, twinnings, you know, tea, you know, Earl gray tea. My God. Maria Menounos presents. That is not why I said, yeah, they had at my showing some Indian film trailers and some like traditional Western trailers. So, which I found very odd because they rolled the like Marcus theater thing.

And it was like, Hey, I'm Greg Mike is here with the, the stars of the newest hunger game film who totally don't look awkward sitting with me pretending to care. And it's like, is anyone here? gonna give a shit like you said this kind of tone deaf because you know the people that I saw the movie with were very like you talked about very excited to see a Rajnikanth film and they were there paying double possibly triple the fucking price to do so and I'm not kidding when I say this like I don't understand why they charge so much I saw what would have been the second showing they were showing it once a day at 830 at night hmm. Yeah, I saw mine late, but that was only because it was, you know, like I couldn't make the 730.

I couldn't make the six. The six was in Hindi. So I was like, no, no. My God, you had more than one showing. That's insane.

Oh, and it's doing that. One in Tamil, that's it. That's it. Oh, I'm glad that, yeah, we've got such a wide Indian audience up here that they show it multiple times a day now, which is good. And in multiple languages, which is even better.

Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, it was kind of like when they were doing the Studio Ghibli thing. It was like, okay, well, you can go see it in dubbed English or see it in Japanese with subtitles. And I was like, yeah, I'll just see it in Japanese with subtitles.

Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, if this is the first time you're listening to my show, I'd like to advocate for, and like Mike already alluded to, don't watch these movies with subtitles. or not subtitles, with anything other than subtitles. Like, don't watch it dubbed because you're not going to enjoy it. And definitely, I mean, like Mike said, try to watch it in the original language that it was performed in. In Indian films, that can be extremely hard in the United States to get your hand on those movies.

Not every film is like a Rajnikanth film that is available on Amazon Prime Video. And I can also tell you, as someone who worked on and has an Indian... movie podcast that needs to get back up and running again. Some of these films are impossible to find in English or with English subtitles, let alone dubs. Like that's the biggest barrier to entry. I feel like with any of these films is anyone's willingness to watch a film with subtitles, which means, and I, I realized Mike, I think now what the issue actually is.

It's not that people don't want to watch a movie that they have to read. It's they don't want to watch a movie. They have to pay attention to actively. Because you can't just sit and zone out to a movie with subtitles, like especially this one, like or any Indian film. Like I'm not going to say they're unintelligible, but a lot of what is going on is character drama, which is driven by dialogue.

Right, exactly. And like I was saying, you don't know what's going to happen next. You could be in a heavy drama scene, and then next thing you know, it's a scene with the driver's name, Yogi Babu, where it's just like, okay, what is happening here? How is this happening? If you aren't paying attention, you're kind of fucked.

Well, and that's whenever I think about, you know, and I I have such a kind of again, this is as much as anyone has a personal connection to Rajnikant. I went to India when I was 21 years old and met some friends there at the New Delhi airport, which is a real leap of faith to meet your friends at the New Delhi airport and expect them to just pick you up as a six foot tall white man. You stick out. And so I was just like, oh, okay, well, I'll just, you know, just get me, pick me up. I won't be able to call you.

I won't be able to do anything, but I'll just expect you to be there. On the flight to India, I watched Robo, which is, or Enthron, which is the Rajnikanth Bicentennial meets The Matrix meets The Terminator film, which is... Or Bicentennial Man, yeah. Meets the Terminator, meets the Matrix. Yeah, I would say with a little bit of...

What's the film? iRobot? The one with Will Smith? Yeah. It's kind of... Have you seen Enthron?

Have you seen Robo before? You know, I don't think I have, which is surprising. It's... I mean, it is like three and a half hours long. It is a lot, but it is also...

It's a Rajnikanth sci-fi kind of comedy action romp. where he plays Dr. Frankenstein in Frankenstein's Monster. Right. It's a Duke Rajnikanth in the role he was meant to play, himself and himself. Those guys who do the Corridor Crew videos on YouTube, they have covered a few Indian films.

I think they just did another episode a few weeks ago where they were talking about some Indian films, and they did cover Enthron on there, which was kind of nice. They covered the sequel as well. Yeah, maybe the birds with the bird. Yes, that's the cell phone. That's the sequel.

That's the sequel is fucking nuts. If you think that first one's crazy, then the second one becomes like a deathly serious film about like cell phone pollution. And it's like they're killing the birds. So the scientist kills himself and then becomes one with the spirit of it's fucking nuts. Well, there's usually a message in these movies, which is crazy too.

I mean, we've seen some. Yeah. All of this to say, I love Indian cinema. It's something that I feel like in the last couple of years, I haven't had the opportunity to watch as much as I used to. And again, you know, I, the Bollywood cinema club is something I'd spent a lot of time with, like a lot of time with a lot of Indian cinema.

Mike and I have recorded, I mean, clearly we recorded a fucking jailer episode at one point. So it's, it's, it's on my computer. It just needs to get out there. But it's one of those things where, The issue with Indian cinema actually becomes a different thing, which is they are so long and such a commitment of time that for anyone to have to have to watch them for any reason other than because they want to. Some cases can be kind of a hassle.

I mean, I look I love this movie. But I am not going to advocate people go to the theaters to see this movie if they can wait for it to come on streaming. Because it's really hard to get a hold of. I had to drive an hour each way and pay three times the ticket price to see this movie. I'm not saying it wasn't worth it.

If I had been in Omaha anyways, I still would have gone and seen it and I still would have paid the money. But the issue is it is triple the price and it is often probably not immediately at a theater near you. If this is immediately at a theater near you, down the street from your house, if you're lucky enough to live somewhere that has a large Indian population, or a demand for this kind of film in theaters, which in Dallas there really is, especially in North Texas, where you have that kind of privilege, totally go check this movie out. Otherwise, it's going to be on Amazon Prime before the end of next year. It'll be on Amazon Prime in the next year, I would assume.

Oh, I would say within a few months. I would say Patan was on streaming before the end of the year, and that was one of the bigger films that got an Indian. Release on, on prime. And I know that like, we've already talked about this movie is just in the wake of how much money the first movie made, which the first movie was the second biggest Tamil film at the time after like the, we just talked about 2.0, the sequel to Robo being the first one, Rajnikanth punching that ticket over and over again. He's like that guy.

He's like Usain Bolt. He's like, I'm just going to keep running faster. No one else can beat me, but you know who can beat me? Myself. And that has become Rajnikanth at this point in terms of like South Indian cinema.

I don't really know other South Indian cinema that gets released in the United States that people are going and selling out the entire theater to see. I think it's Rajnikanth. Genuinely. I know I was a little mad about Cooley because I went to see Cooley at the theater. And then I think within just a few weeks it was on Amazon Prime.

So you're right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. To be fair, I don't like Cooley that much, to be fair, though.

I like it still. And I haven't gone back. To it, though. Right. Like, I can't not compare it to Jailer is the problem because he's almost playing the same play character in a lot of ways.

Right. No, I mean, I do like the whole thing in there with that great killing machine that they have. And I thought about that a little bit. I thought about Cooley while I was watching Jailer 2 when there's that all-woman hit squad. And I was like, wait, was that?

Yeah, I was like, is that Cooley? Or was that the Shah Rukh Khan film? I'm not sure. But yeah, these four or five women just show up and start shooting everybody. And I'm like, okay, cool.

This movie had a lot of those, like just people showing up. And there are a few people where I was like, I, I imagine this person is really, really big in India, but I don't know. So I'm thinking specifically of. Her. Yes.

Have you not seen a movie with him in it before? I don't think so. When he showed up, they were making such a big deal. I know is like the big one to see. They're making such a big deal that I was like, oh, it's going to be one of those two guys from Triple R.

Do you know who it was supposed to be? Do you know who that Hrithik Roshan, do you know who it was supposed to be? I read it was supposed to be Shah Rukh Khan. You would have shit. I would have.

I would have just been like, I don't. It was amazing when the other Khan showed up in Cooley at the end there. Oh, yeah. Amir Khan. Right.

Yeah. Okay. Because I was trying to remember. I was like, wait a second. When I was watching this yesterday, I was like, wait a second.

Is Amir Khan going to show up? But when Hrithik Roshan showed up, I was probably... I mean, I know I was the only white person in the theater, but I was not the only person who was... audibly excited that it was Hrithik Roshan because he's a fucking dreamboat. He is. Ranbir Singh is a dreamboat, but Hrithik Roshan is a real dreamboat.

It was supposed to be Shah Rukh Khan, which, man, I would have died. I would have fucking died. I need to see more of the movies that some of these guys like Mohanlal and who's the other guy that is always in there? Jackie Shroff. Jackie Shroff is in there.

Uh, don't watch any Tiger Shroff films. Tiger Shroff is, uh, I think Tiger Shroff is Jackie Shroff's nephew. Tiger Shroff made a movie called Muna Michael, which is, it's a movie about a dancer who loves the music of Michael Jackson, thus the Michael in the title, but it's also a film about how he's teaching a gangster how to dance for a dance competition. So I believe that they can launder money. All right.

How fucking high concept does that sound? Yeah. Poor Jackie Shroff was barely in this one. I was really open for more. None of the cameos were in this one, unfortunately.

Like, that's the thing. You know, I liked this movie, but I will say I wish I could have seen Jailer 1 in theaters. Because I didn't see Jailer 1 in theaters, did I? I don't think so. I think you did.

I don't know. You're going to have to go back to your episode. I'm trying to remember, yeah. I don't think I would have seen Jailer 1 in theaters because I, well, I'm trying to remember. I can't genuinely remember.

I know I saw Patan in theaters, but I was trying to remember if I saw another Indian film in theaters. It might have been Jailer. I can't remember. That was like the post-COVID, pre-divorce years. So it's like a weird... window of time.

I know I saw Patan because Patan came out on Indian Republic Day and it was like a big deal at the time. I like this movie, but it is nowhere near as good as the first one, right? Yeah, I like this movie as well. I don't know. Yeah, it's not as great as the first one, but I still really found a lot of things to enjoy about this.

I mean, they do some very similar things. I mean, obviously it picks up from the first movie, which I was very surprised that just like, and I kept wondering like how soon after is this? Because I don't really get a sense because the grandson looks very similar to how he did in the first movie. And I was just curious, like that would be for me, like the, you know, the, the rings in the tree, you know, if you cut the kid open and you see how many rings he's got and I'm just. Like, okay, stranger things.

Has it been? Yes, exactly. So I'm like, oh, okay. He doesn't look overtly grown up yet. He doesn't know.

He's still just adorable. Um, but yeah, I, I, I was surprised that just them saying like, oh, Hey, you know, Varma, uh, was killed. We don't know who killed him. We're going to have to figure this out. And I was like, oh shit.

Yeah. With, Rajakhanth or tiger killing his own son, you know, via those amazing assassins. That was the other thing I was kind of bummed out about was I never got to see those assassin guys. I love those guys from the first movie. Yeah.

So it, it, it toned down a little bit on, I'd say it would tone down a little bit on the comedy. There were some pretty funny things in there, especially the, the boss of the town. That is just such an idiot. The, the guy who runs the fruit stand is, I love all of that stuff. But I kept wondering, though.

Sorry, I'm kind of all over the map. Did so this one picks up with, you know, like, OK, we're back at home. Tiger is back doing his thing. Actually, he's now working at a grocery store and restocking shelves. Just like, yeah, it's like very weird where it picks up, in my opinion.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, OK, well, now we have to deal with the aftermath of this stuff. Now we have to deal with like, OK, what happened to his son?

And he's not telling his family that his son was a bad person, really wants to spare them from that, wants to spare his wife and his daughter in law and his grandson of all of this pain. Which I like that as a reasoning. I like that, too. That's a very like I think that's a very smart character reasoning. And it's only smart.

And again, I think it's smart because they actually address it later in the film. Oh, as opposed to just like us, as opposed to us doing the like the heavy lifting. I like and again, like, you know, I don't think like I'm I don't know if I am unique in this regard, but I actually appreciate when a film that's this kind of film just and again, I'm saying Indian film more or less. is just overt about what it's getting at. I don't mind that, really. I don't know about you, but with these kinds of films, I don't mind that.

Yeah, no, I don't mind that either. So he's working at this grocery store, laying low, and then there's a little incident that happens where the water from his tap is not running clear. His wife is like, hey, this is pretty brown. And he goes to a city official and is just like, hey, what's going on with this? And the city official is just like, oh, you think that's bad?

That's nothing. It should have been coffee brown. And it's just like, why is this guy picking on Rajikath? I guess there was an incident before that with one of this guy's men who is just being kind of a prick. And so Rajikath takes care of this guy.

And then that leads to the little bureaucrat. He doesn't want the stolen water to be used as a weapon. Right. Which then he'll be like, well, then I'll be taken in as the peddler of weapons, I think is what it is. Right.

So Raja Khan takes it into his own hands and fixes this, the water problem. And that just sparks off this whole thing that just elevates and elevates. And it's just, it's bizarre how fast it elevates and how it goes in all these different directions. I mean, I love the way that it goes, but at the same time, later on, You know, because we do have the return of Yogi Babu, who's from the first movie, who played a taxi driver or like, yeah, I think he was a taxi driver in that one. Right.

Or he was a driver. And they even make a reference to that where he's like, oh, I used to be a driver just like Raja Kath, because eventually Raja Kath gets kind of Shanghai into being a driver for this petty business. little boss guy who runs this fruit stand. And then at one point, Yogi Babu is trying to kill Rastakhan. And he talks to the guy who was fucking around with the water. And then that gets immediately back to Rajnikanth.

And I'm sorry, I'm going to keep calling him Rajnikanth instead of Tiger. Yeah, we'll just call him Rajnikanth. I mean, is he not– is Jailer not Digger, essentially? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like the most Rajnikanth thing possible.

Every one of these things, it's just Rajnikanth playing himself. like do it absolutely and it's like all of the like the musical like cues are just like he we get it like we get it like and it's well deserved it's 100% 100 well deserved everybody in this theater is here to watch this guy i wouldn't be watching this film otherwise. The way that they will hide his appearance before it, he shows up or like, you know, they'll do like, Oh, you see him through glass or you see him through this other thing. Like here, you see him stocking the shelves. So you just see like the hand and him like reflected through the water bottle and all of these things until like, finally you get the big reveal. And that's when the audience goes fucking nuts, you know?

And I love that, but intentionally they know, and it's an intentional manipulation, but it totally works. And now he's so associated with those. It's like the shark in Jaws. Right. He's so associated with those glasses that it's like now even with the glasses.

And I loved how the glasses became his command thing in the first movie where he would just. Take his glasses. And the cigar flip as well. Oh, the cigar flip. Oh, the cigar flip.

And then that one guy throwing him the lighter. Oh, so sweet. I know. It is like really trafficking in Rajnikanth as an icon. And- again, like they, they, it's almost like they just build the plot around that.

Cause again, like it is so very similar to Cooley, but again, in Cooley, I would say Cooley is like Jawan is to Patan where in Jawan, SRK is playing kind of like a more villainy character than Patan is. Cause in jailer, he's not like a bad guy. I would say he's like a morally righteous character. Cooley, he's kind of a shithead, right? Like if I remember correctly, he's like the villain, he's like morally a bankrupt character, but that's not like, but you're there for it, right?

Like that's the intention. this one it's like he's like a family man with this somewhat like jaded past i don't even like i don't know it feels like a lot of the subtlety of the character has been stripped away in the second. Movie right a little bit yeah not a. Bad way it's just like he's just he's like now he's like a grandpa just killing everybody like don't mess with my family absolutely like the dog to john wick you know don't mess with my dog john wick don't mess with my family. Jailer absolutely absolutely So I wanted to know when Yogi Babu contacts the guy who is trying to make the water bad. And the guy that...

Rajnikanth bashed this guy on the head. And I love that whole thing. Like, you see that color? You're going to see a whole lot more of that color. Talking about his blood.

You're going to see a whole lot more of that color if you don't fix my fucking water, basically. But when Yogi Babu calls him... Or like... talks with him and he comes back and he holds up his three fingers and Rajakath is like, oh yeah, I'm going to pick this middle one and that means this or whatever. And he knows what Yogi Babu was up to and he goes, oh yeah, that guy was my man. When was he my man?

When did that little bureaucrat from the city, was he always set up? That doesn't seem... like it would make sense. Like, did he become his man later on? I don't know. Okay.

I, it's one of those things where like, and again, like I felt this when I've watched Indian cinema from time to time. Sometimes I feel like I have to watch one of these movies twice, if not also have to have like a Wikipedia to like go back to, because I feel like they're so dense, right? They are. And also because, and this is again, something that's, I think it's something that we probably don't appreciate as, and I'm not saying we, but I think like a lot of people just in our country, a lot of these people's names are like a very common or uncommon name. But to us, it's like they're, they all are very tonally, like not totally sound the same, but again, it's like, it is hard to keep a lot of them straight because there's so many different ones.

But again, someone who grew up in India or is Indian or speaks Tamil or Telugu, those names don't stick out, but I've got to assume also that's a problem. Like if you think about American cinema, how many characters there are that are like Michael or James or Jack. And it's just like, Oh my God, they all sound the fucking same. So let's say I've got to assume that there's some of that. We just don't pick up on in terms of being English speakers, that it's the same thing in these films.

And it's hard to keep it straight. Sometimes it really is. You have to, I remember when we did those a better tomorrow films, like I fucking sometimes I'm like, who the fuck are these people now? Like where the fuck do these people come from? And in a lot of Indian cinema, I struggle with that from time to time.

I'm like, now who the fuck are these people? And sometimes in these films, you have a character being played by the same actor, and it's a different character. There's none of that in Jailer 2, but in Jailer 1, he plays himself, and then he plays the younger version of himself as well. Right, right. Yeah, and you just get that real quick glimpse here.

And I was so happy with that moment when because I just watched the first jailer again and I was like, Oh shit, that's the guy from the prison who was talking about how he's going to take out jailers family. And they, you know, had his guys at the little checkpoint and the one guy comes along and he's selling like coconuts or whatever. And one of them is actually a bomb and takes out their van and all this. And he's just like, yeah, you try to mess with my family. I'll cut you up into so many pieces.

That'll take three weeks for them to even put you back together. It's like, Oh, OK. So when he shows up in this one and just he's like so tough talking like, oh, don't worry, I'll take care of all this stuff. And then as soon as he sees who it is, he's like, wait, this guy was a jailer. wait, what prison was he at? Yeah, it's like, oh God.

And then it's like the doors open. It's like, it's like, here he comes, man. And just those little quick flashbacks to young Raja, even like that morph from old Raja Khan to young Raja Khan. So fun. It, I mean, again, it's so, I'm so glad that the film is willing to kind of, again, play with the audience's expectations of rajnikanth but also gives the audience i feel like what they want which i don't know it's not that hard right with with with rajnikanth like it's very easy he is so charismatic he is so just enthralling in everything he does i don't know there's just like this It always reminds me of, oh God, what's the doctor of Doctor Who with the scarf?

With the colorful scarf? With a wink and a nod and a touch of the nose. Rajnikanth is just always like, he's always one step ahead of you. Always. That's always the character that he plays.

I think of the first Jailer where he's sitting across from Varmin and Varmin has the machete and he's threatening him with it. And he's just sitting there. He's just like, can't get me to break. It's like, I Rajni Kant is always like a cool customer and he's always, you know, I just, I was, I was showing my girlfriend, uh, Muthu and that's that fucking musical number to open that movie, man. It's just, you don't need the context.

You don't need to know what the songs lyrics are. You don't need to know anything, but the infectious nature of Rajni Kant is, uh, apparent even in that even in that that musical number with no context of what the hell is being said. At all absolutely yeah absolutely yeah this one i mean like you said he's always so prepared you know he ends up working for this guy that runs the fruit stand as a driver And then, you know, eventually, like, almost literally runs into Yogi Babu. And Yogi is, you know, he's got the guitar case. But then suddenly Rajakhan is like, oh, yeah, he's carrying stolen statues in that case.

And, like, starts to feed into this little petty boss's whole thing where he's like, oh, well, you know, we could. we could just eliminate these lower level guys and just go straight up to the top. And, you know, we can make some money off of this. And basically like is making this guy thinks that it's his idea. And that leads us back into this whole world of, of Varmin. And it's just the guy who plays that boss, the one that, that, uh, Roger kind of eventually goes to, but like, I love how they just keep...

The one guy is just like, what's a driver doing here? Go out by your car. Get the fuck out of here. What are you doing? I love that guy.

He's so good. And... Oh, yeah. When. the first meeting that they have when they try to meet this guy that they have on the bridge and it's like the two mid-level managers that are there and they're just like, yo, who the fuck is this guy? This fruit stand guy, what are you doing?

And he's like, oh, you want to be careful talking about that. There's going to be problems here. And when all those other cars show up and they're just like, they all go after them at the same time and you just start seeing all these guys being taken out by snipers. I'm just like, like you said, like he could have a fucking machete to his neck and he's just so cool. He's, he's as cool as a cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce, you know, and just all of these bullets going everywhere.

And he's just like, yep. Okay. Like no, one's going to make it as far as me on this bridge, unless they stop. And is that not how you do this kind of movie with an actor who really can't like do physical stuff anymore? You know, I mean, absolutely.

And, you know, it's funny. It's like Harrison Ford is only. what, like what? Five years older than Rajnikanth. Like Harrison Ford is what? 81, 82.

So maybe like six or seven years. They're not asking Rajnikanth to do that level of stuff, but they're also just tailoring the film around it and knowing that you don't expect him to do that. I love that this is how you do this kind of movie with an aged superstar. I like that this is how you do it right, where it's like you said, you don't have him beating people up. I mean, there's a little bit of that, but for the most part, it's like he's just... smarter than everybody else.

He just knows how to be more resourceful. And, you know, he knows how to, you know, put to better use his toolkit that anyone else does. And he's always better prepared. And I like that about the, I like that about these movies and this character that he's playing, because it's so, I don't know, you could, you could really take a page out of this kind of movie in terms of like, yeah, Rajnikanth is 75 years old, but doesn't feel like it. It's not leaning on it so much as like what we've seen before in our own cinema where we have an aged superstar.

And we're like, well, what is he supposed to be doing physically in this movie? It's like, well, very little. And so we kind of can't do anything, I guess. But it's like, or you can, you just can't expect that much of it. You can't expect it to be believable either.

Like no one would expect Roger got to be doing any of the stuff he was doing in Muthu in this movie. And I'm just talking about like jumping and doing fucking flips in and out of a carriage with a horse like that alone. You know, I mean, it wasn't believably doing it then either. But now, I mean, no way. Yeah, and I noticed that when it's dance numbers, he just does kind of the arms up kind of thing or like a lot of sitting in chairs.

I'm absolutely fine with that. I mean, I remember how awkward it was when we were going through all the James Bond films. And you started to get that older Roger Moore, who also not nearly as old, but also being asked to do way more. How old was Roger. Moore at the time of those movies?

Like 51? 50, yeah. Fuck, and it's like, he's too old to play. Fucking Harrison Ford, 75 years old. He's too old.

Like, maybe. Like, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about that because it's that ageism question of like, well, when women are too old to work in Hollywood, they're just kind of forgotten. It's like, Well, when men are too old to work in Hollywood, they're now just digitally de-aged, I guess, instead. It's just, it's very odd.

It is an odd predicament because yeah, like Rajni Kanth, I think is a weird example of how you do it right. in Indian cinema. But I also would like, you know, the next thing that Rajnikanth is going to be in is a Kamal Hassan film. Kamal Hassan, another actor in, in, in, I guess he's not Bali. Well, he's South Indian as well. So he's kind of a contemporary of Rajnikanth and he's an older actor as well, but yet he's still the lead in things.

And the movie is just the two of them. I think the film is like K H X R J. Like, yeah. Just like Godzilla X Kong. Godzilla X Kong.

Holy shit. But I think it speaks to them. And these are both like old men, old guys in their 70s. But yeah, you know what? If that movie's showing somewhere, fuck, I'll fucking show up for some of that.

You know what it is? It's very much the Liam Neeson of things because Liam Neeson is no spring chicken and. He's still out there. Oh, gosh. I don't remember.

I'll have to look it up. But I mean, he's He's been doing these action films and you see with like, what is that? Like a walk among the tombstones or something. There's one of the movies where he jumps over a fence and. It takes like 74.

There you go. What the fuck? Yeah. It takes like 17 cuts for him to make it over a fence. He's one year younger than Rajni Khan.

Yeah. What? Well preserved, man. I don't know what it is. Like, you know, there's that whole thing where it's like, look at Wilford Brimley when he's 50 and then look at Paul Rudd when he's 50 and the huge difference between those two guys.

And it's like, we're people just living a lot rougher in the past. Are we moisturizing more? Is it because of bottled water? Are we looking younger? I don't know what it is, but I'm so glad that we're not, you know, I'm, I'm 54.

I'm not walking around. You don't look like you're in your fifties. Oh, I'm so glad for that. The water. Yeah, exactly.

The fluoride folks. It's the fluoride in the water. It's keeping us young, keeping us young, keeping us orange. I don't know what it is either. Yeah.

Fucking. If you, if you asked me to tell you how old Liam Neeson is, I would not say 74 years old. I wouldn't say Rajni Khan. I mean this, they, even in this movie, I wouldn't say Rajni Khan looks 75. they make him. I mean, what's funny is you go look at his picture on Wikipedia.

You'd be like, who the fuck is that guy? Cause he Rajni Khan. That's like Dolly Parton. It's like, he always looks like, I'm not going to say he looks like jailer too now all the time, but he kind of always does. Now he's got like the perfectly coiffed hair, the glasses, the mustache and the goatee and the beard.

It's like, is that, it's just like. Oh, so perfect as far as where the gray is and everything. I know, that's what I'm saying. He's not, Jailer's just Rajnikant. It's not really, we'll call him whatever you want.

I'm just going to call him Rajnikant because that's who he's playing. It's funny that in the first movie, there's that whole thing of the two guys with their wigs, their hair pieces. And it's like this big joke of like, look at these guys, they're balding. And I'm just like- Yeah, maybe look at the main actor, too. He's pretty bald, but I like that they are playing with that, even though Raja Khan definitely is wearing wigs all the time, but it's like, yeah, perfect.

It looks great on him, and it doesn't look like a wig. It looks really, really good. This is not like back in the day when it was like, oh, look at, speaking of another Bond, look at Sean Connery and what different weird wig he's going to wear in this movie, or even look at Now you look at Nick Cage and you're like, okay, he's always going to wear a weird wig, but it doesn't look bad. Even some of the wigs that Bruce Willis would have on. It's like, okay, these look decent.

It's like wig technology has caught up to these older actors that want to hide their baldness. I was glad when Bruce Willis finally just shaved the head and was fine with being bald. Maybe one of these days Nick Cage will do that, but who knows? Well, I'm trying to think if I've seen a Rajnikanth film where he's bald. Well, Iridan, he was bald in that one.

He just was bald with the sunglasses on. But it could have been one of those bald caps like Shah Rukh Khan wore in his Jailer movie. Oh, Jawan. Yes, yes. Did you see Jawan?

I did. I saw it at the theater. Okay. What a weird movie, right? We might have even done an episode on that one, too, Chris.

I don't know. I think we might have that one. Remember, it's not the one where he's like stepping on the gun to reload it. Is that the, is that that one? Is that the one where he steps?

Yeah. He's got the, uh, that's where he's got the army of girl assassins. Yeah. And he's got the, the head wrap where he looks like a hush from Batman. Yeah.

Yeah. Good God. There are so many, I mean, it's like, it feels like it's from like a different time. Cause it was so long ago. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, even the first jailer feels like it was so long ago compared to where we're at today. So that's why I was so surprised. Three years ago. Yeah.

And what's crazy is by the end of this, they're like, hey, by the way. Did you know that we're going to get Jailer 3? Oh, God, yeah. They are setting up the sequel so hard. Oh, my God.

Jesus Christ. I was like, okay, well, there we go. I mean, I guess, you know, I'm not surprised, right, in a lot of ways. I can't say I'm surprised because it's such a successful... Now it's a franchise.

Yeah, it's a franchise. I guess, for me, it's one of those things where Rajnikanth is... I don't know when he's going to stop working, if he's ever going to stop working. And so I'm not surprised. He'll probably be 80 years old.

Oh yeah. You know, I mean, he's just, he he's it's, he's one of those actors and I don't know. It's at this point, Thalavar, I don't even know how to pronounce it. Thalavar. That's what they call him.

That's like the title they've given him. Yeah. That's even in the, uh, the song. Yeah. And so, by the way, they're just calling his movies Thalavar 173 or Thalavar 174.

It's like, you know what I mean? It's like that's like how they would have the K numbers for the Mozart's music, where the guy came in and had to catalog all of the Mozart songs because he wrote so many. That's insanity, right? Mm hmm. Yeah, well, that's always so strange when you look at these filmographies, because I was looking up a lot of these guys like, oh, have I seen Muthan Chakraborty before?

Because he plays ultimately the head of all of the bad guys, the one that is behind all of this art theft that's going on, who is on his own private island and stuff. And I'm like, have I seen this guy? Well, let's see. He's only done, oh, 382 movies with seven coming up. It's like, what?

Like, how am I going to know? Like, have I seen some of these people before? You know, like, oh, Vijay. Okay, how many movies has he done? Let's see.

Oh, just 99. He's a young guy. Okay. With 15 movies coming up. according to IMDb. So, okay.

And I will believe that he will do all those 15, plus probably another 30 within the next couple of years. Because these guys, they crank out these films like mad. Well, and that was going to say, it I think speaks to the way film is treated in India. Everybody watches movies in India. It's uncommon to not watch movies in India.

And I'm saying like everybody, like it's, it is weird that to interact with people in this country that don't watch movies anymore because like we had a movie culture in this country for a while. And I think we're kind of like skewing back towards it a little bit, thankfully, but in India it's, it never went away. Like it, it, it is, it has stayed, it has been become, it has, it has become culture like in a lot of ways, like it is, part and parcel of the culture. And I love that about Indian cinema because Indian cinema feels really in a lot of ways, like the last bastion of a kind of filmmaking that doesn't exist in our country anymore. It's kind of like gone by the wayside, which feels like honest filmmaking.

Like it is a little, depending on the film over the top or whatever, but there are honest, you know, Indian films that I've seen, just like there's over the top action movies. I think there's this weird assumption that because it's a foreign film, It's going to be this serious, genre-less drama film, and it's not. You can go see effectively a big, dumb action movie like Jailer, or you can watch a more kind of dramatic piece. Yes, Indian cinema tends to have less specific genre lines, even within a horror film. There's still musical numbers, and there's still other things like that.

Mm-hmm. I don't know. I think for me, the thing that I love about Indian cinema is that it is still a thing that people love to go do, and that is watch movies. And I think that when an actor is working that much, tell me an actor in Hollywood that's other than working actors that work that much. And these are people that are well-known, and they're working this much.

There are some actors that only work once or twice a year. go look at Yogi Babu's filmography for fuck's sake. Like Jesus, it's massive. And he's five years older than me. That's it. He's like in his early forties.

Like, and he has a massive like credit list as long, long as your arm. It's, I don't know. People are acting in Indian cinema. A lot of them, I think because they actually love acting and there's a, market for people to watch movies. And this, this movie, I think obviously is a sequel to a movie that was immensely financially successful.

And this one is equally financially successful, but I think, you know, Rajni Khan is still a name and will probably always be a name enough for people, everyone to come out and watch. And this movie does traffic in that, but not in a bad way. I mean, if, if you know that that's a thing that people are going to do, wouldn't you take advantage of it? I would like, you know, $ 20 a fucking ticket sold out showing once a night. And it's theater was full like, and that's in Lincoln, Nebraska or Omaha, Nebraska.

You know what I mean? Can't imagine what this film was doing in India. You know, those theaters, my God, like fucking, I can't imagine because it's probably an experience that is only a minor version of what we see in our respective cinemas. And that's a thing I would love to see is I would love to see this film in In South India with an opening night crowd. Can you imagine what that would be like?

Like when he shows up with no sub, oh my God, with no subtitles. Can I get English subtitles, please? I meant to, I wanted to ask some of the people that I was sitting around, like, are they reading the English subtitles? I'm assuming they're not, but I don't know. Right.

Because again, you know. just because I view them as Indian does not mean they speak Hindi. They might speak Telugu or Tamil. So there is that again, like these, the film I saw was in Tamil, but like you said, there were Hindi showings. So there are people who want to see it in Hindi. Yeah.

Yeah. I just looked, uh, even just tomorrow at the theater that I saw it at, there's three screenings, a one 45, a five 30 and a nine 15. The first two are in Tamil and the last one's in Telugu. Amazing. Yeah.

That's amazing. Yeah. We really are living in such like a great time to be able to go see film in theaters. And I'm not, I, again, like that's weird for me to say, because I feel like I didn't go to the movies for a really long time. And I'm not sure that the film going experience has changed dramatically since COVID.

I actually don't think it's gotten much better. I think in a lot of ways it's stayed about the same. I don't know how it could get any better. I really don't like, The seats are about as comfortable as they're going to get unless you're sitting in a slang super seat. There's no better seat that you can get other than a reclining one that's a leather seat.

I don't know what anyone would expect. I don't want to go to a movie theater and eat food. I don't want to sit and have a fucking meal at the theater. So that's out in terms of I'm going to see a movie. I want to watch the movie.

So I don't know how much better or worse the experience could get. It is always going to be dependent on the people that are in the theater if they're there or not to see that movie. And I would prefer to see a movie with an engaged crowd. And I think by going to see an Indian film in a limited access market like yours or mine, or most of the places you're going to see Indian cinema in the United States, you have the benefit of seeing it with a group of people that are going to be engaged and excited to see the movie. And I think that that is an experience that is hard to replicate.

And that is, I think, what anyone who wants to watch films in this country should want as a filmgoer is like, watching a film with an engaged audience. That's not on their phones. Cause I don't think there's any other like thing you can do to change the theater going experience other than hope that they make better movies for us to go see, or just go see this. You know, I know that we could have gone and seen street fighter, but I think this movie is probably better than street fighter from what I've heard about street fighter. Now I haven't seen it, but jailer two is a much more broad in scope film than street fighters probably hoping to be.

And getting to see a film with a 75-year-old megastar whose name on the screen elicits a reaction... I don't know if people were whooping and hollering when Zangief was beating the shit out of Dhalsim on screen, but I know when Rajnikanth pulled out an umbrella and grabbed a guy by his collar, people went completely ballistic. So good. The umbrella action in this is so awesome. And just the one guy who's just like... just being so pissy with him and stuff.

And Rajikath is just, I mean, he's there teaching lessons the whole time, right? And if he can't teach you a lesson with an umbrella, he's going to teach you a lesson with a fucking machine gun. That machine gun scene was a little crazy for me, where I was like, oh, this is the guy I'm cheering for is the guy who's got a machine gun just shooting through this guy's back. I don't know how many times. All the blood going out of that pregnant lady at the store.

And then goes over to the other guy who's just like, oh yeah, you never had a chance to, your friend never had a chance to hear my name. Here, let me tell it to you and you can give it to him in hell. I believe the line is you can give it to him wherever he is right now. And I think you'll be meeting him. Yeah.

Good God. He blows him away. Good God in heaven. And again, like it reminds me of those John Woo, like those like elevated kind of like tone films where it's just over the top. You get, you know, it's funny.

I, I know that we complain about slow-mo with Zack Snyder and Michael Bay, but this is how you do slow-mo, right? Oh God. Because it's in service of making your superstar look as big as possible. And Rajnikanth is one of the, He's one of the biggest Indian superstars of all time. In his respective market, there is nobody bigger than him.

He is the Shah Rukh Khan of Tamil cinema or Telugu cinema, probably more aptly. And, you know, it's again for a Westerner watching these films, that context is lost on us. You can see it with the audience you see it with. If you see it with an audience in this country, that's all going to be a lot of, you know, people who love Indian cinema or Indian people. And they will make you aware as to who the people are that are worth whooping about.

Like Mike said, they don't have like a subtitle for this is for Thiek Roshan, but yeah, when he shows up, the filmic language presents it in such a way that even if I don't have an audience of people like you had, or I had, I think it's still made obvious who's important. I may not understand, but I can look them up after and see who that is. But, That's so lost in this day and age. Like, I'm not saying like everything needs to be completely unsubtle, but I like this kind of filmmaking. I like this kind of filmmaking when it's done right.

And when slow-mo is done right, you can do slow-mo right. It can be in service of something other than action. It can be in service of making a character look as massive as possible. Mm-hmm. I want to see more stuff with Vidya Balan because I really liked her as one of the villains in this.

She's got a real julio louis dreyfus vibe going on for me almost like maybe it's that like streaks of gray kind of reminds me of her character from the mcu but i really liked her and just how just what a horrible person she is. And just that whole like little power play she's doing around coffee and tea. Like, oh, you have to order one of those. That's the rules of the house. And then it's like, oh, you haven't finished your coffee yet.

You have to drink your coffee before you can go. So that's why when, you know, my line to open this was coffee canceled. When he does that to her, I'm just like blocking a, this is so great. I love that whole that whole scene at that party is just so great between the dance number that's going on and then the whole thing with the wheelchair and that pulley system and the trucks with all the artwork. I mean, it just really amps up so much stuff.

And again, it's like, other than maybe the four bald assassins, I'm trying to think. I mentioned the one guy who kind of gets short shrift, but everybody else is here. I mean, we don't have like, of course, like the actor director, like those guys. And I kind of, you know, felt a little bad for not seeing the little guy with the big mustache, that guy from the first movie, but everybody else is here. And even having that, I wish I knew the actor's name because I can't seem to find them on the IMDb, but the little guy is, And just that scene where they have all of the little people and they all have to stick up their middle fingers to show that they aren't bitten.

And then the one guy has the bandage on there. I love him. I love when he shows up and stuff. And he seems to be like kind of a constant presence in these Roshnikov films. At least I think he was in Hooli as well as this one, as well as the, you know, the first jailer.

And I think I've seen him. Did I see him show up in a Shah Rukh Khan film? Is that possible? I, maybe, maybe. Yeah.

I need to find out who this guy is. Cause he just pops up and I'm like, I really like him. I think, I think you're right. I'm trying to remember if he was. Yeah.

No, I think you're right. I think he was in all three. Yeah. Shah Rukh Khan though. Not in this movie.

No, no. I think Roshan in this movie though. Yes. Yeah. What did you think of that scene?

It did feel a little, like, tacked on. Not in a bad way. It was wild. It was wild. It was fucking nutsoid.

The second time I've seen a car crash through a building, and I have to say, this was done way better than Disclosure Day. Oh, God. It wasn't invisible. It wasn't an invisible car. I love that they show up, that they crash that car through the building, then he has the minigun just on his head.

Oh, so good. I didn't know that Hrithik Roshan was in this movie, and I was trying to figure out who it was. I really thought it was going to be Amir Khan, because I did get that cameo confused. And I was like, oh, is that going to be Amir Khan? I was like, oh.

But if it had been Shah Rukh Khan, I think I would have died. Oh, God. But Hrithik Roshan's a close second. I mean, he's... And I like how he's like, you know, I owe it all to you, Babu.

And it's like, okay. That was great. It's like, oh, my God. Like, okay, whatever. He was laying it on very thick.

Very thick. Very thick. Which, again, I love. Like, you know, they're paying, you know, they're paying, you know, homage where homage is due. They're paying, you know, respect to Rajnikant, who is a multi-million bajillion, you know, selling actor.

And this film, I think, you know, all he has to do is just fuck around for two hours and people are pretty excited. Like he's, he does, I don't know. He just does a really good job. I think it being so charismatic that even someone like Hrithik Roshan, who is as charismatic as Rajnikanth in a lot of ways, he can't upstage him in his own movie. He even has to pay like, you know, lip service to the guy, you know, pay respect to the man.

It's like, yeah, I mean, yeah. Okay. Like makes sense. he's not in the movie a whole lot, which I think is smart. I don't, I don't think they have that much money and or time, but I do like how he's in. I feel like, again, his cameo gets in the way of like some of the other people.

Like there feels like less of those kind of buddies of Rajni Kant than this film versus the last one. This is more of a him versus people on his own, less with all of his kind of, you know, cadre of pals, you know, the Jackie Shroff and the others. Right. Yeah. I almost wish Jackie Shroff had been driving that car instead.

I mean, again, you know, it would have made more sense if there had been less of those cameo adding more cameos. It would have been, you know, I think just utilizing the ones that are already there. Right. Because again, they're so big in their own respective cinemas and getting those actors all together is such a big deal. Like you don't have to keep adding to the pot.

Sometimes you don't need to add more to it. Like you already have enough. Just utilize them in more interesting ways. And, you know, I'm probably complaining about something that they're going to do in the third one where they'll have, you know, Hrithik Roshan and them and Shah Rukh Khan. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that moment when they're threatening his family and they cut to the house and it's the three guys sitting across from the wife and daughter-in-law. And I think they even have– no, they bring– later on is when they bring out the– the tissue box, which was so nice. Like a call back to the first one where he has the tissue box on the table, but where they have those three guys just sitting there. And I'm like, Oh yeah, this is great.

And I really wanted more of them. Of course, like the one guy's family, he gets threatened and beat up and all this kind of stuff. He gets to come back and he gets his revenge, which was nice. But I was like, Oh yeah, I really want more of these dudes. Cause they just are.

They're so cool. And Jackie Shroff with that huge mustache and, and how they showed him at the jail in the first one, playing games with Rajnikanth and stuff. It's like, yeah, this is really good. And he sends all of his men, and his men get killed. And he's like, you didn't tell me who my men were going to be trying to kill.

Yeah, this deal's over, Varma. We're done with this stuff. And immediately turns all of his allegiances back to Jailer himself. Yeah, Shiva Rajkumar is, I think, of the three, he's the one who's given the most. Yes, he is.

You know, absolutely. Which isn't a lot either. I mean, it's very little comparatively to the last film. Exactly. So if you want to keep your friends doing things at a high, high level Rajnikanth, maybe include them in your film a little bit more because they're kind of I don't know, they're not in it as much.

They were like a big part of the last film. This feels more like a cameo in this film than it did in the last one. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, Jackie Shroff for sure was very cameo. And then even the guy who ends up driving that car and.

Crashes the plane. What did you think of the villain in this movie? Which one? Right, exactly. Are you talking about the SJ Surya, the Bodhi, like the main one?

I mean, he's a proper bastard. He's good, yeah. Yeah, he's a proper bastard. I mean, what's funny is he's like Varmin in a different way. Like Varmin, just like Bodhi, I guess, he's like the most villainous character in the movie.

He just kind of does whatever with impunity. And I like that about, like, not all the villains in these films are given that. They're not given the power to just do whatever they want. And he is like at that level in the film where he can. I like that.

He's not really a physical threat, which also I think helps. And that man, that fucking scene at the end where Jailer just beats the shit out of him. Oh, yeah. It's just, I don't know. In a lot of these movies that I've seen, the villains really are deserving of the fate that they are given.

They earn the fate that they are given. And I would say his character earns the fate of having Rajnikanth kill him and then have him blown up even, which is just, yeah. Fucking goodbye oh yeah as the four of them walk away in slow-mo from that explosion and you already have the one walk away from an explosion slow-mo when he has all the guys that he tricks them all into showing up at the one abandoned building and they're like well where's russia khan's family and then he's outside with that crutch that has the camera in it he's just like hey surprise motherfuckers. He's I love I just love Rajnikant as an actor. He you can ever read the goddamn phone book.

He's just so he is so good at conveying emotion with his face. But he is also a really physical actor, too, and believable. And, you know, like you said, I mean, yeah, we do have a lot of kind of like cutting around him in a way to make sure that certain things work. physically for him as an actor now but it i i think like his performance is so good and he's so charismatic and endearing that it doesn't matter like i kind of don't care yeah and and that's weird because like that's that's not the case in a lot of american cinema like i'm not willing to go that far in american cinema and with indian cinema i just i feel like the the the level of intent with the filmmaking is still not wholesome, but it's just they're making film because they love making film.

And you can tell that Rajni Khan loves making film. he loves making movies. That's like his, like, and you know what? He's really good at it. So let the man do, let the man do what he's good at. It's a shame because if you look at his filmography, he used to do like seven movies a year and now it's like one every year or two every year.

And it's like, man, that's what getting old means when you're this, you know, kind of prolific as an actor is like, you're only able to work once a year as opposed to eight times a year. Cause like we mentioned with someone like Yogi Babu, he's, Filmography is longer than most actors in Hollywood ever will be. And he's like, like I said, he's like 41. Fucking Rajni Kant is 75 and he's still working. Like, good Lord.

Yeah. No, it's very admirable. And yeah, I think part of it is can't. And then that probably part of it is won't. He probably can say, I've got fuck you money.

I don't need to worry about this. You're right. Yeah. Well, and you know, when people are getting up and cheering because you show up on screen, I can't, I don't know. You probably, At some point, you're like, I love that.

That's part of it. The adoration is probably a lot, a huge part of it. We always talk about Amitabh. going out and waving to his fans every Sunday. And the only reason he stopped doing that was because of the pandemic. It's like, what?

That's wild. That is like, there's no one. I mean, I'm not saying there's no one like that in the United States actor wise that would get people like that, but there isn't, there is not one singular actor where thousands of people will, will just wait outside of his house to see him. Like that's, that's insanity. And that's, you know, I, I think that speaks to the level of, ingrained within the culture movies are in India.

Because this movie is, I mean, again, this movie is really just existing on the back of Rajnikanth. And if you want a Rajnikanth movie, it checks all the boxes. He kills people. Like Mike said, he decapitates several people. He fights people.

He has famous friends show up to come and help him of multiple variety. It sets up a sequel at the end that I think is rather interesting sounding. I did not expect the film to have him turning himself in. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That was strange. The guy who is driving that vehicle. I was like, is he working for tiger or is he not? I guess he's not.

Cause he's just like, you better answer the phone. And then that ends up being, you know, the surviving family member, the woman. And I'm just like, ah, cause yeah, we didn't see her die. Okay. That makes sense.

And now, you know, she's going to be trying to get her revenge and, Yeah, now the jailer goes to jail. So we'll see how that goes. And that's Vijay Sethupathy at the end, which again, another massive actor. Okay, I wondered. Yeah, at the end in the car.

Yep, that's again. When you get somebody that turns around in the car like that, it's almost always like, oh, it's that person. But yeah. We want to talk to you, Rajnikanth, about the Avengers initiative. Right, exactly.

I mean, that's what that is at the end of this movie. I mean, it's what's funny is you've seen Patan, right? I mean, the one with Shah Rukh Khan, where he's flying around with the jetpack and he's the. Like James Bond. It's like Indian James Bond with Shah Rukh Khan.

It's a, it's a fucking amazing. Um, at the end of that movie, it has one of those, like at the end of some of these, like there is a whole spy film connected universe in these Indian, like Bollywood films, like the big, you know, their MCU equivalent is literally more or less. And, um, they have like post credit scenes in their movies, just like MCU films. Wow. Yeah.

And it's like, you know, Oh, we're sending you on this mission to go find this person. And it's like, Oh my God, it's, you know, this actor, that actor has never worked with someone else or, you know, whatever. And it's, this movie just foregoes that just has it at the end of the movie. Cause yeah. When it, cause like you said, when he turns around, it's like, Oh, the people behind me were like losing it in the theater.

I was like, Oh shit. Okay. Like I, I did not know who Vijay Sethupathi was. Again, I, you know, I'm not as up on all of the actors from every, every line of Indian cinema completely. But yeah, the people in the theater knew who he was.

That's for sure. Jailer 3 coming three years from now. Three years. Rajnikanth will be 80 almost. 78.

79 almost. Jesus Christ. Good for him. Absolutely. Yeah, this guy deserves all the praise.

I know. Would these movies play for an American audience? That's a good question. I mean, I didn't think Triple R would play for an American audience, but it sure seemed to. I mean, that was kind of a real breakthrough.

I was hoping that there would be a fast follow-up with something that came afterwards where it was just like, oh, you like Triple R? Okay, well, let's give you this next. And it feels like somebody just kind of missed the boat when it came to that. Yeah, yeah. Which is weird because RRR was like, I mean, I knew people that had never seen an Indian film that were singing the praises of RRR.

Right, same here. I honestly felt like Pataan was one of those movies that like it could have bridged the gap. Like it's literally just a James Bond, Mission Impossible style film with Shah Rukh Khan. And Shah Rukh Khan is such an ageless, timeless creature that he looks like he's like 30 in that movie, but he's actually like 60. And so it again, like it has that weird kind of feeling of just like timelessness.

And I don't know, like Triple R kind of had that feeling of like timelessness to it, like kind of a I don't know, like I thought it was going to be the thing. And like nobody talked about it. Weirdly, Triple R did not move the needle in retrospect as much as I thought it would. Or clearly you either. Like I liked Triple R, but. there are better Indian movies out there.

I feel like it's one of those, like, you know, it's like anything else. If you watch a lot of them, triple R is really not that exciting because there are better ones. But if you've never seen an Indian film before, triple R probably melted your fucking brain. You know, jailer is a pretty crazy movie. Jailer two is a pretty great, even by American action film standards, jailer one and jailer two are pretty nuts.

You know, the villain in the first one, the kind of the weird villains in the second one, the decapitations, the violence, the humor. Like it's there's not really a comparative to say Coen Brothers might kind of be reductive to these movies, not the Coen Brothers. Like there are not really comparatives to this kind of film in American cinema. Same with Patan like that. I mean, Jawan in a lot of ways similarly, like remember how confusing Jawan was where he's like playing Does he play his dad in that movie?

He does, yeah. Jesus Christ. Remember when Shah Rukh Khan plays a little person? I don't think I've seen that one yet. I did see the one where he plays his own, you know, praised fan.

No, that movie rocked. We saw that one. Yeah, we watched that one together. That movie's wild. Yeah, but yeah, what was the little person?

Was that Zero? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Okay.

Which is, I mean, it's way more endearing than you would think. And that's, again, because of who Shah Rukh Khan is. And that's the thing. Like, I do think that, you know, and I will say, you know, Harrison Ford gets a lot more mileage, pardon the pun, than most actors would doing the Indiana Jones thing at his age. And I think Shah Rukh Khan has also done the same thing.

He's built up a lot of goodwill. Mm-hmm. You know, Shah Rukh Khan, I think, you know, Shah Rukh Khan, Rajni Khan, they've all built up a lot of goodwill as actors. And so they can, you know, Rajni Khan, that's 75, maybe not the most believable action star, but I don't think it matters. Like this movie, so much fun, such a fun, again, a fun entry into a series, but again, just like another fun film to see Rajni Khan just doing his thing.

And it's, it's fun to see someone who is as talented, and as gifted as an actor, just, I think, organically. Like, Rajnikanth, like, I'm not saying he wouldn't be good at anything else, but he's so good at acting, why would he need to do anything else? It's crazy to me that he was a bus driver. Yeah. Right?

Can you imagine that universe where we never got Rajnikanth? That's such a bummer, but I love that he is such a massive star that they will just be like, you know what, whatever, do whatever Rajnikanth and people will show up. You want to be a superhero? Fine. You want to be a jailer?

Fine. You want to be a villain? Fine. You want to be whatever a robot with another robot fighting another robot? Fine.

People show up. And I love that because I don't think that's ever going to change. And I don't think that's ever going to change for either one of us. Like, I think that if we can, we should try to see one of these movies a year if possible. If they bring them to our neck of the woods, that's the other kind of thing, you know, it, you know, thankfully we live in a time where you can see that.

I don't know how the fuck you would have seen these movies in the nineties. How did people see Indian cinema in the seventies in the United States? Mike, did they, uh, I'm sure there were little theaters around probably in certain cities, but I'm not sure. And then also, yeah, like what would have. Made it over here, you know?

Because, like, we're lucky that this is one of the films that's made it over here. This is not the only film that's being made like this. Like, there's hundreds of these goddamn movies being made. It just happens to be this is the one that escapes the gravity and makes it far enough over. I'm sure it's very similar to the Chinese market and just, you know, you would have, yeah, like the small theaters in Chinatown kind of thing, but then, you would have the grocery stores or the different places that would have these VHS tapes.

So I'm sure VHS was huge for the Indian market at one point. And now it's streaming services, it's Eros, it's Sun, now Amazon is getting in on it. Netflix has a lot of Indian films. Now, which is nice. You can watch a lot of them free on YouTube.

Oh, that was the big thing, was when I would go past some of my Indian co-workers' desks, they would have YouTube up and just have Indian movies up all day long. And with that, I never had to yell at anybody because they were getting their work done. So I'm just like, you can put on whatever the fuck you want as long as you're getting your work done. I don't care. So just do it.

And isn't that wild that they don't really police it on YouTube? Like, you can see... A lot of the movies we've mentioned are probably on YouTube, including jailers, probably on YouTube. I'm assuming like, yeah, probably not in Tamil, but in Hindi or Telugu or something else, there's probably no English. That's probably, there's no English subtitles is probably the problem.

That's it. Yeah. I mean, I just, I'm doing some research for a commentary track, and the movie I'm going to be talking about has not one, not two, but three Indian versions of remakes that they did in this film. And I was able to find one of them has Shah Rukh Khan in it, and I was able to find that with subtitles. What film is that?

Crazy Four, with two A's in the middle of it. Crazy Four. And then the other two are South Indian films. And I was unable to find those with subtitles, but Chris, the magic of the magic of brand scripts that are available on YouTube being translated by. Claude or chat GPT and turn into SRT files.

It's a thing now. Oh my God, did you get it to make it work? Yes. I hate all of this. I hate all of this so much more.

You know how much I struggled in the past? Oh, you know, because you've done this longer than I have. Folks, if you don't know how hard it is to try to get audio, or I guess SRT and audio files to sync up with one another and with the video to watch a film, a foreign film, you have not learned the struggle. Because even up until... Up until what Mike just said, it would have been fucking impossible.

Damn near fucking impossible to get that to work. But the fact that you can just– oh, Mike, of course you can. And you can probably get it to queue up correctly to everything based on the file you have. Of course. I don't even have to ask.

Yeah, and I wrote a couple prompts for it and everything. I guess this isn't Shah Rukh Khan in this crazy foreign. It's two Z's, not two A's. Sorry. Crazy.

Crazy. It's a 2008 Hindi language thriller. Yeah. Sorry. I thought it was Shah Rukh Khan on the poster, but it wasn't.

Oh, wait. No. Special appearance by Shah Rukh Khan. Special appearance by that. He's in there.

Yes. Okay. Legally obligated appearance by. Shah Rukh Khan. Yeah.

I now have a couple different. the little tools that I just go, okay, sync this up with this. You know, like if it's on YouTube, I can say, just go there, sync it, you know, pull the transcript, translate the transcript, put it into SRT. So yeah, it's amazing. We are like it. You know, folks, you can sit and drag AI all you like for any reason and you're more than welcome to, but it makes podcasting a hell of a lot fucking easier in terms of especially watching foreign film.

Apparently, holy shit, I can't even believe it. There are so many films I have been unable to watch because there's no translated version. And that is such an exciting prospect because and that's the thing I do think is an interesting thing to mention. Being able to watch these on prime video with a automatically synced English subtitle track makes a world of difference for, and I'm, I'm mean this with absolutely no negativity towards the quality of these movies makes it so much easier to try to get normal people to watch one of these movies. If you're just like, it's on prime video, you don't like the path of least resistance.

You have to do very little. Or it's on Netflix now. I mean, I, I just, I didn't realize that I had seen Dilsay until I was at the Red Cross and put on Netflix and was watching it. I was like, I've seen this movie. I know exactly what's going to happen in this movie.

I've been at this train station. I remember this woman. So it was very funny. But it's like, yeah, OK, great. Now I can just hop on Netflix and watch an Indian film.

And that's the best thing for me when I'm giving platelets because they're about three hours long and that's how long I'm in the chair. And Shah Rukh Khan is so dreamy. He is, he is. He's a dreamboat. But you know what's funny?

For as dreamy as Shah Rukh Khan is, I love that Rajnikanth is kind of, what is the energy Rajnikanth has? Is it like manly energy? Because he's not bald, right? And not being bald with his full head of hair, it's like the image of manliness. Rajnikanth is just like a, I don't know, he's like a man's man, right?

Yeah. Like what's funny is like, you look at him as that character. It's like Stallone, Schwarzenegger, all these other actors were chasing the thing that Rajnikanth has figured out how to master, which is being believable at an older age as a action star. Right. Right.

Yeah. It works. And I don't know if it's, I mean, cause it's, it's like big grandpa energy these days, you know, especially like, you know, you get to see him caring for his grandson and, you know, just being very sweet and everything. And, you know, working at the grocery store, I mean, this might as well be like a fucking greeter at Walmart or something. Clint Eastwood, right?

Yeah. He's like Clint. He's like, it's kind of Denzel Washington to me almost. Oh, it's like, you know, you push Denzel so far, you know, he's going to start pushing back. Yes, exactly.

It's kind of like those equalizer films that he's in. Yeah. I, I do think that that would be how you would like sell these movies to an American audience. as like, you know, revenge grandpa, like in a lot of ways, like, cause I mean, jailer, like, yeah, he's a retired jailer. You know, he is at the end of his career. You could make an entire, clearly you can make a fucking entire series about him as a jailer.

I'm sure. God only knows they very well might, you know, with a digitally DH. But it's, it's funny because that is such a big component of this film. And the last film is like the family. and Rajnikant's, you know, jailer's family, and, you know, he has a family, and this family, he's defending his family, and his family is kind of his, if he has any weak point, the family is the weak point, you know, and I love that, like, the thing that's the weak point is how wholesome he is, apparently, how much he cares about his family, and, like, I don't know, like, I'm not gonna say, like, we don't see that as much in American cinema, but we don't see that as much, like, we don't see, like, like someone's family is like on screen and it's like believable I'm you know trying to think of Disclosure Day you mentioned that earlier like what was what was the reasoning behind what Emily Blunt was doing it definitely wasn't her shitty boyfriend you know it's like I don't know like it's weird like they really they lean into the big grandpa like you said big grandpa energy in a way that's believable even though he is a 75 year old man like he fucking decapitates multiple people in this movie yeah And it doesn't, it tracks.

I'm still like, like you said, like, this is our hero. Like, this is the guy who we're cheering for is the guy who's blowing people up and cutting their heads off. It's like, yeah, sure. Sure is. Yeah.

So, so much fun. I mean, yeah, I agree. Like, I probably won't go back to this as much as the first jailer, but I'll probably still go back to it quite often because I just had a real fun time with this. Same. Yeah, no, I'm excited for whatever they do with the third one, which they're clearly angling for as long as Rajnikanth is up for it.

I'm excited for it. But yeah, I think for me, I enjoyed this movie. I enjoyed the experience of getting to go and watch this movie. I enjoyed that the audience I saw it with was there for the same reason I was, which was to see a Rajnikanth film. But yeah, I don't think that this is... this I don't think is going to supplant the first one for me.

No, no. I do think, and that's, I will say that that's the thing that this movie is missing and it does loom large over this movie. Obviously his back and forth with his son in that first movie is really good. That relationship is really good and you're really invested in it. And by the end of the movie, when he asked to kill his son, Oh yeah.

It's a, it's an earned moment, you know, it's really earned and that is missing from this movie. It does feel like the missing component, but that's, again, because that was the fucking driving force of the first movie. But I do think that that is why the first movie still just edges this one out, is because that back and forth with his son in the first movie is so good. And the twist in that movie is predicated on their relationship being as strong as it is that that that is the one thing one thing that is missing from this movie that does kind of put it one notch beneath the first one for sure. Yeah.

I was so glad when they showed that little clip from the musical number from the first one, and you got to see Blast Mohan or whoever, and it was like, it's this guy. And they had the picture of him with the green outfit and everything, just taking that around. I don't know if they had planned that Jailer was going to get a sequel three years ago, but it feels like they really did a good job of integrating the first movie into the second movie, so it felt very natural. I assume, I don't know. I guess I don't know.

My assumption is they knew what they were doing, but maybe they didn't assume that they were going to have a sequel. But they did a really good job, like you said, of making the first movie part of the second one without it getting in the way. I think you could watch the second one without having watched the first one and still enjoy it. Which, you know, I don't know how many of the kids that were in the movie theater with me that were clearly children had even seen the first one. this might've been the first movie they saw. I think you could still watch this one without having seen the first one and understand what the first one's kind of, where it got to by the end of it.

Did you hear any of the people when they were walking out of the theater, their responses or reactions to the movie? Because the people I heard enjoyed it immensely. Like adults and kids were seemingly very enthralled and had a good time with this movie. So it also is working like gangbusters, which I'm happy for. It seemed like everybody was pretty darn happy.

I didn't, I, I hung out in the theater for a little while waiting for that extra scene at the end with Nick Fury. With Nick Fury. Yeah. And then there was a little bit of like with Owen Wilson and something about like the, the, multiverse is collapsing or something like that, but right. Right.

Yeah. But no, I hung out in the theater just because it was pretty crowded and I wanted everybody to be able to drive away first before, before we got out there. Cause I didn't want to deal with the parking lot mess. Yeah. I, man.

Yeah. I, I, we were, it was the fucking movie got out of like midnight. Yeah. We were like the only people in the parking lot when it got out. I will say I'm not a huge fan of only one showing. that promotes a little bit of weird scarcity.

Cause I feel like, uh, if you want to go see this movie, you should be able to, but you know, only one theater, one showing that's better than none. So exactly. Yeah. Which there are none in Lincoln. So maybe put one in Lincoln.

For fuck's sake. No, don't just put them in Omaha. That's the weird thing for me. I had been able to watch Indian cinema in Lincoln at the downtown grand more or less up until this point, I wonder why this film was not there. I'm wondering if something, because maybe because of something like, uh, you can see everything, which I know like is only showing it one theater in Lincoln and that's downtown.

That may be why something like this didn't open. Cause normally we do get in a Indian film pretty regularly. Like I said, I saw a baton there and I'm assuming at least Joanne and maybe jailer. So, No, I'm just glad we're able to go and see these movies easier than before, because that's that's nice. That's nice that we don't have to go to a VHS store in a Indian supermarket to get a poorly pirated or possibly not pirated with no English subtitles version of the film.

So film together, you can find us. on a variety of other shows at weirdingwaymedia.com. That is the all new website that Mike made for our podcast network that we have been running together since 2019. Seven years, Mike. Jeez Louise. I think it's technically going on eight now.

It has been seven because I want to say we started the network in like August of 2019, if memory serves. I want to say something like that. I think it was 2022 myself. No, it was pre-pandemic. Really?

Wow. It was pre-pandemic when we, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was 2019. It's been seven years.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, isn't that crazy? That's wild. Where's 2022? Yeah, I thought it was 2022.

I thought it was because I was working at UWM. I remember when I was talking with Amy and you on the phone at the same time. Oh, maybe I'm all fucked. No, I don't know. I don't know.

Yeah, because I was switching back over from another company that I started dealing with in 2021. They were hosting instead of Spreaker. Huh. And they were not paying me on a regular basis. They don't pay me no more.

Why am I thinking 2019? Because didn't we switch to Spreaker in like 2019? Maybe you did. And then we combined forces in 2022. Huh.

Well, folks, we'll have to go and look. It's been a long time and we've done a lot of recording. As you can tell, we clearly don't even remember now all of the things we've done together. My God. But if you want to hear all of that, that audio repository is weirdingwaymedia.com, which like I mentioned, is a website that Mike made for us.

And you can find all of the shows over there. My shows, Mike shows, everyone's shows, uh, are there and you can go listen to all of them, uh, like rate and review on iTunes and Spotify though, external to our website. That is the easiest and best place to make an impact on our shows. Uh, if you want to help us out financially, patreon.com slash projection booth or patreon.com slash culture cast is how you can do that as well, but don't feel obligated to financially support us, but please like, and rate the shows on iTunes and Spotify. And yeah, as always, come on back to either one of our respective shows to hear us talk about movies.

And if you want to hear more of Mike and I talking about new movies, you can find that on my feed very easily. Just look for CultureCastX, the projection booth. Or now they're showing up as changeover episodes. If you want to hear them. I'm making it a little easier for you to find the crossover episodes that we do because people seem to like us covering new movies, even if they aren't Indian cinema.