Vidyut Jammwal

There’s an unhinged, madcap energy to Crakk: Jeetega… Toh Jiyegaa that I couldn’t help but admire, as I love movies that enthusiastically commit to concepts that others would consider embarrassingly outlandish. The film has the same kind of high-adrenaline, logic-out-the-window aesthetic as you might only see stateside in a Joseph Kahn or Neveldine/Taylor production. Which is to say, Crakk belongs firmly in the “I can’t believe they spent this much money and painstaking effort making something this patently absurd” action subgenre. Its title – the word “Crack,” but arbitrarily spelled with two k’s for no particular reason other than to suggest a film that breaks the rules – tells you everything you need to know about its overall aesthetic. If that sounds like a good time to you, it probably will be – at least for an hour or so.

The film’s manic energy, propelled both by the filmmaking and lead Vidyut Jammwal’s entirely straight-faced embodiment of the protagonist (whether he’s completely oblivious to the movie’s absurdity or just committed to the bit, we’ll never truly know), is really the main source of appeal here. The story itself is as bare-bones as action narratives come. Jammwal plays Siddhu Dixit, who calls himself an “extreme sports” junkie but for all practical purposes is really more of a daredevil with a death wish. He makes the Free Solo guy look like a garden-variety mountain climber. We meet Siddhu as he pulls off crazy stunts hanging out the windows of a train, a pastime he’s seemingly had for most of his life. Siddhu makes videos of his illegal tricks in hopes of being recruited for Maidaan, an underground competition for likeminded athletic dumbasses.

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