Indian 2 review: Kamal Haasan struggles in Shankar's outdated direction
Indian 2
Senapathy, aka Indian Thatha (played by Kamal Haasan) is forced to end his exile and return to India to launch a war against corruption.
It feels like ages since we last saw a Shankar film. Actually, that's true. Shankar's last directorial outing was 2.0, starring Rajinikanth, which came out in 2018. And his Indian 2, starring Kamal Haasan, opened on July 12, 2024. In the last six years, the world has radically changed, especially the film industry and the audiences globally.
In light of the new world order, Shankar's approach to filmmaking and storytelling feels outdated. Indian 2 suffered greatly from it, and it's a very unpleasant experience to see one of your favourite directors seem clueless about how to handle one of the iconic characters he created at the prime of his career.
Indian 2 begins like a typical Shankar film. It's a regular day, involving a regular person, Thambesh (Jegan). He encounters an overflowing garbage vehicle and the staff with a rude tongue. It's as if he didn't know there was a mounting garbage issue in the city before today. His investigation takes him to an officer, who, without any hesitation, reveals the scale of corruption that takes place in waste management. It turns out Thambesh is part of a YouTube channel that trolls corrupt people. Chitra Aravindhan (Siddharth) is the leader of the channel, playing the voice of the common man.
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After personally witnessing a tragedy wreaked by a corrupt officer, Chitra decides it is time for Indian, aka Senapathy, aka Indian Thatha, to come back. He starts a hashtag trend on social media, which reaches every corner of the country and the world. Indian Thatha, who is running a martial arts training centre in Taipei, is forced to come out of exile to fight the growing menace of corruption in India.
And Shankar stages one of the lousiest hero-introduction scenes ever seen in Indian cinema. The entire scene, when Indian makes his first appearance on the screen, is depressingly boring. And what's up with the horrible lip sync with Kamal Haasan's performance?
Shankar clearly had no clue how to stage that scene or what he wanted to achieve with it. The scene is so bad that it makes Kamal Haasan look like an amateurish actor in bad makeup. That's only the beginning of a series of such directionless and purposeless scenes. There are glaring logical issues, a lack of emotional depth, and a visible desperation to evoke audience sympathy. It sullies our experience and memory of one of the landmark movies in Indian cinema, Indian (1996).
Indian 2 seemingly finds some narrative rhythm towards the end. In the first part, Senapathy is touted as a friend to the poor, but in the second part, he becomes the enemy of the people. The whole country is so embroiled in corruption that it has become the way of life for its people. And when Senapathy returns to a radically evolved country with his old ideals to challenge the way of life of the majority of people, he gets almost lynched in public.
While promoting Indian 2, Kamal expressed his admiration and excitement for Indian 3. When you watch the movie, you will know why.