'Indian 2', produced by Subaskaran Allirajah and Udhayanidhi Stalin, hits the cinemas today. In this section, we are going to review the latest box office release.
Plot:
Senapathy (Kamal Haasan), a freedom fighter turned vigilante who fought against corruption in India, is living in Japan where he teaches martial arts with a grim expression on his grumpy face. Chitra Aravindhan (Siddharth), who has been exposing corrupt politicians in India through his videos, floats a game-changing hashtag campaign named #ComeBackIndian.
As the campaign attains gigantic digital proportions, it hits the shores of Japan. Senapathy decides to come back to India to eliminate the big fish among the corrupt. How about the small fish? It is up to the people to identify the corrupt within their families and get them arrested. The call can be revolutionary. But will it be?
Performances:
Kamal Haasan shows little acting range and depth except in an emotional scene in the second half. Director Shankar seems to have a lot in store for him in 'Indian 3'. For now, though, Kamal struggles to outshine the hollow script. Siddharth, true to his style, delivers a performance that doesn't know subtlety. When he hyperventilates, it is as though we are watching him talk in an offscreen interview.
Rakul Preet Singh and SJ Suryah have absurdly inconsequential parts. Bobby Simha is poor in the role of a hot-headed cop out to nab Senapathy. Priya Bhavani Shankar as Aarthi, Chitra's fellow comrade, is okayish. Samuthirakani (as Chitra's father), Kalidas Jayaram (as the Google-dependent doctor), Nedumudi Venu (as the retired cop who couldn't nab Senapathy in 1996), Manobala (as an e-Seva employee), Gulshan Grover (as Amit Agarwal, a businessman who has defaulted on thousands of crores of loan), and many others also feature in different roles.
Technical aspects:
Ravi Varman's cinematography is not convincing. It looks so low-effort that you could be watching a medium-range movie made by, well, Meher Ramesh. Anirudh Ravichander's music is insincere. It punches way below its weight. A couple of songs that worked in the Jukebox go for a toss in the movie.
Sreekar Prasad's editing hits the choppy waters. The fights (by Anbariv, Ramazan Bulut, Anl Arasu, Peter Hein, Stunt Silva and Thiyagarajan) are uncreative. The VFX supervision by V Srinivas Mohan is an unsupervised mess. The Sound Design by Kunal Rajan is terrible.
Post-Mortem:
Here is something provocative. The aesthetics of 'Indian 2' are closest to 'Komaram Puli'. Shankar is more in the SJ Suryah territory here.
This sequel to the 1996 blockbuster, 'Bharateeyudu', mixes the motives of its predecessor with the template of 'I'. Senapathy executes the killings with clinical precision (but randomness). He likes to make his targets behave weirdly for no rational reason. He just wants to make a statement to himself and to the person who is not going to live beyond a few hours.
Senapathy is also digital savvy. He doesn't believe corruption has peaked in India unless there is a mega social media campaign of sorts. He is like an Avatar Purush who won't come uninvited. Millions have to pray for him to open his third eye. He orders his victims to surrender their ill-gotten wealth. Bingo!
He kills the biggest granite baron (who is a Gujarati, non-controversially) but there is only one cop in faraway Tamil Nadu who is interested in nabbing him. While the rest of the country furiously types in praise of the vigilante, the cops run helter-skelter like headless chickens.
All corrupt people in the country are scared while watching him on their mobile phones/laptops/tablets in unison. Meanwhile, the cops and the CBI sleuths talk secretly in the middle of a river while rowing a boat. Why the hell?
There is a random Sivaji reference. 'Kurchi Madathapetti' and 'Jaragandi' are played in the backdrop just so that the audience don't doze off watching Siddharth's dull screen presence and Senapathy's pointless disguises.
From IT raids to scholarship scams, from corporate scandals to loots in the name of mining, the film packs many things that are relevant. However, the narrative is so basic that it feels like we are watching a second-hand copy of a second-hand copy of a Shankar film.
Closing Remarks:
'Indian 2' should have been a 20-minute flashback episode in a story that we are going to watch in 'Indian 3'. Such a vacuous storyline has been stretched into a 3-hour movie. Just imagine!
