Jolly LLB 2

About the film

Jolly LLB 2 (marketed as The State vs. Jolly LL.B 2) is a 2017 Indian Hindi-language legal comedy drama film written and directed by Subhash Kapoor. A standalone sequel to the 2013 film Jolly LLB, it stars Akshay Kumar as Jagdishwar Mishra, with Huma Qureshi, Annu Kapoor, and Kumud Mishra in supporting roles. Saurabh Shukla, Sanjay Mishra, and Brijendra Kala reprise their characters from the original film.

Based in Lucknow, the story follows a lawyer who fights a case against a ruthless and powerful advocate to bring justice to the deceased victim of a fake encounter involving a corrupt police officer and a terrorist presumed dead.

Plot

Jagdishwar "Jolly" Mishra is a Lucknow-based lawyer who stays with his wife Pushpa Pandey and son. Despite being a lawyer, he works as a menial assistant to one of the most famous lawyers of Lucknow, Mr. Rizvi, for whom his father had worked as an assistant for 30 years. He is street smart and dreams of his own law chamber.

Seeking to arrange money for his own chamber, Jolly lies to a widow, Hina Qasim, telling her that Mr. Rizvi will take her case and that the fee is 200,000 rupees. When Hina finds out that Jolly lied to her, she commits suicide. Jolly soon discovers that Hina's husband, Iqbal Qasim, was killed in a fake encounter on 13 August 2015, the very next day of their marriage, by Inspector Suryaveer Singh, who depicted him as Mohammed Iqbal Quadri, a terrorist, in official documents. Singh also shot a fellow constable, Baldev Singh Bhadauria, in order to show the encounter as genuine, leading to his death.

Filled with guilt, Jolly decides to fight Hina's case and files a PIL. Singh then hires Lucknow's best lawyer, Pramod Mathur, to fight his case. After reprimanding Jolly for his mistakes in filing the PIL and no credible evidence, Justice Sunderlal Tripathi gives a date for hearing and warns Jolly to collect some evidence before the hearing.

Production

The film was announced in July 2016, where the lead actor Akshay Kumar had revealed his first look for the film. It was reported that Arshad Warsi, who played the lead role in the previous installment, was replaced by Kumar. Actress Huma Qureshi was signed as the female lead, pairing opposite Kumar. Annu Kapoor was signed as the antagonist of the film pitted against Kumar.

Principal photography of the film began in Mumbai. The major parts of the film were shot in Lucknow in a one-month schedule. It was further reported that the first schedule was completed in September 2016. The second schedule was shot in Varanasi in later September 2016. A stunt sequence was shot in Ganga river, where Kumar declined to use a stunt double. The final schedule of the film was shot in Manali, Himachal Pradesh in October 2016. Kumar shot his scenes in a time span of 30 days. A promotional song was shot in Mumbai in December 2016.

Controversies

The film's title and depiction of the Indian legal system created a controversy. Advocate Ajaykumar Waghmare filed a case at the Bombay High Court for removal of the word LLB and stated that the use of the word is a "deliberate attempt" to insult the Indian legal system. The Bombay High Court appointed a 3-member committee to examine the content of the film. The Supreme Court of India also appointed a 3-member panel, consisting of Chief Justice J. S. Khehar and Justices N. V. Ramana and D. Y. Chandrachud, to review the film.

The film's trailer had shown a derogate reference to Bata Shoes, a shoe brand. The firm Kochhar & Co, on behalf of Bata India, had issued a legal notice to the filmmakers for the comment and filed a lawsuit of ₹30 million (US$310,000). The CBFC had edited out the reference to the brand with respect to the filed lawsuit.

The film is banned in Pakistan, Central Board of Film Censors of Pakistan had objected some scenes related to the terrorism issues in Indian Jammu and Kashmir.

Release

The film was released on 10 February 2017, prior to the release of the film, the CBFC had passed the film without any cuts.

Soundtrack

The music for the film is composed by Manj Musik, Meet Bros, Vishal Khurana and Chirantan Bhatt while the lyrics have been written by Shabbir Ahmed, Junaid Wasi, Manj Musik and Raftaar. The song "Jolly Good Fellow" incorporates lyrics from the English folk song "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". The full movie soundtrack was released on 13 January 2017 and it consists of four songs which includes one Qawaali song too. The music rights are acquired by T-Series.

Box office

The film opened with a domestic collection of ₹132.0 million becoming Akshay Kumar's eighth highest opener and second highest of the year following Raees. The film shown growth in next two days collecting ₹17.31 crores and ₹19.95 crores on second and third day of release respectively and took its first domestic weekend collection to a total of ₹504.6 million. It became second highest first weekend collecting Bollywood film of the year after Raees. Its cumulative collection in next four days evaluated to ₹26.25 crores and with that, the film scored first domestic week of ₹777.1 million. After Raees, Jolly LLB 2 is second highest domestic first week collecting film of 2017. As of 2 March, the film has collected ₹ 1172.4 million domestically And It Declared As Superhit By BOI.

Key details