Jamtara on Netflix Review: A Compelling Take on the World of Crime!

States like Bihar, UP, Jharkhand have always come to our imagination as the popular hot spots for world crime, Jamtara: Sabka Number Ayega– the new series by Netflix also follows the same crime genre, but in a stylish manner. It is a cinematic journey for the viewers, to the world of crime through the lens of Budhia Singh’s fame.

The story revolves around a few youngsters (mostly juvenile) in the village of Jamtara, who were indulged in a phishing network. They are involved in making random phone calls to unknown people to get the details of their debit cards and stole money from the latter’s bank account.

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In the introduction scene, the viewer will get an overview of how these young-adults had become a part of a phishing racket and made fake phone calls for the desire of money. With that establishing shot, the spectators will engage with the lives of these characters.

The primary storyline revolves around Sunny and his four friends Rocky (his cousin), Shahbaaz, Ponto, and Munna. To con people across the nation of India, they need a single phone, identity, and a few minutes to convince someone. Subsequently, the story focuses on the challenges they faced in the form of a newly posted young Superintendent of Police, Dolly Sahu, and the local legislator named Brajesh.

Jamtara primarily showcases on how young adults were struggling to sustain a good life without any misery. Take Gudiya as an example, who decides to get married to Sunny (even after the caste problems between the families) for the sake of immigration to Canada. It is a Chakravyuh (labyrinth) of politics, money, love, and hatred. Jamtara illustrated how these individuals from small towns try to leave their remarkable mark in society but are left with sorrow all alone.

Director Soumendra Padhi utilizes the characters of Baccha and Bacchu cleverly. Both the characters were references of Sanjaya from Mahabharata, and how he looked at the death of his relatives on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Similarly, both the characters could predict the inevitable end of these juvenile individuals in the soil of Jamtara.

For the last few years, urban spectators displayed an interest in the lives of these people from rural India. And I should commend the showrunners for not casting the typical actor like Pankaj Tripathi, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Rajkummar Rao, Manoj Bajpai or Piyush Mishra in any lead starring roles. The entire cast of partly new and unknown faces felt like a breath-of-a-fresh-air and welcoming.

One of the many achievements of Jamtara is its showcase of characters, and the stakes the character kept for the sake of their lives. In its entirety, you will not find the typical trope of romance or tension around the story. The creators did not employ a magic realism to end the show on a happy note.

Soumendra Padhi consciously illustrated the existing caste politics in rural India. Even if someone tries to dissolve his/her caste through money, the upper caste society will never forget the caste of that individual. For example, in a vital scene when Brajesh visits a semi-furnished flat of Sunny and Gudiya, where he uttered that his forefathers would never drink water from their hands, but, with the change of time, he allowed himself to take a morsel from their plates. The show became significant in the contemporary context that it was their foolishness to believe in a con and wished for a better life, far away from their confines.

Netflix’s Jamtara: Sabka Number Ayega revealed an underlying message of the failure of our society that made it horrible for these young-adults who attempted to find their freedom in different ways. As I mentioned earlier, it is the labyrinth that will never let the marginalized (economically and socially) individuals live their lives as per choices.

Rating – 3.5/5 | Grade – B+

Written by Sayantani Barman
Images via Netflix

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