Jaane Jaan (2023) is a thrilling mystery movie in Hindi, based on the struggle of a single mother, Maya D’souza( Kareena Kapoor), who is caught in a crime investigation. This movie is directed by Sujoy Ghosh (Kahani , Badla) and shot in the beautiful hill town, Kalimpong. It is available for viewing on Netflix from September 2023.
The story of Sujoy’s Jaane Jaan is an adaptation of Keigo Higashino’s award winning Japanese novel, the Devotion Of Suspect X (2005). Most of the story is preserved intact — like the meeting of Maya with her ex-husband (Saurabh Sachdeva ), who still wants to extort money from her. The encounter turns violent when her daughter gets involved as well. Finally the ex-husband ends up dead in her apartment. Hearing the commotion the middle-aged neighbor, who is a Mathematics teacher (Jaideep Ahlawat ) tries to help Maya. Though in the Japanese story there is an additional character, the physics professor and math genius, who solves the mystery in the end, I thoroughly enjoyed Sujoy’s adaptation especially how he preserved the element of mathematical puzzle. But the clever plan of the neighbor appears to fall apart when his former school friend and cop (Vijay Varma) starts a meticulous investigation to get to the truth. This is similar to the Chinese movie The Devotion of Suspect X (2017). Sujoy Ghosh adapts the climax to bring a unique surprising ending!
Interestingly, this movie reminded me of the blockbluster Hindi thriller Drishyam(2015) that also had a similar crime that was covered up using the same tricks by the hero, the father of a teenage girl, who along with her mother was involved in the crime of killing her abuser.
A LEAF IN THE WIND 