‘Indian 2’ movie review: Kamal Haasan, Shankar’s underwhelming sequel relies more on its past legacy and future promise

After making his debut with the Robin Hood-esque Gentleman and mounting a simple love story on a complex political backdrop with his sophomore film Kadhalan, director Shankar dialled it up to eleven with his third film, Indian. Apart from the trope of a former freedom fighter taking up arms against those decimating his country, the poignant backstory gave the titular hero a reason to turn vigilante, a cause worth sacrificing even his own son. This sense of emotional turmoil the character had and the empathy it rightfully extracted from us are just some of the many crucial elements that the sequel Indian 2 misses.

Senapathy (Kamal Haasan), who reaches Hong Kong at the end of Indian, is now in Taiwan, the land where his idol Subhas Chandra Bose died. While those who waited for Bose’s return never got to see that, a bunch of YouTubers, disillusioned by corruption, trend #ComeBackIndian on social media causing the veteran to return to his homeland. While everyone expects him to serve justice with his belt buckle knife, he first asks the country’s youngsters to call out the corrupt folks in their own households because… cleaning starts at home.

Probably the biggest takeaway of Indian 2 is how the sequel tries to shed light on the people behind corruption and the aftermath of ratting out on those near and dear; lives are lost and families are broken. The very idea of focusing on the aftermath of being straight as an arrow, something which Shankar toyed with the death of Senapathy’s daughter in the first part, makes for an endearing ethical dilemma that our ‘Indian’ and ‘Indians’ who count on him had to encounter. But this idea, unlike Senapathy’s knife, barely scratches the surface.

A still from ‘Indian 2’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

What we are left with are templates that we once used to love in Shankar’s films — grand sets, songs in exotic locales, and huge action set pieces, as well as tropes we long-hoped the veteran would let go of. Cringed at the gross portrayal of the trans makeup artist from I? There’s an unnecessarily problematic scene here where our hero, with his varma kalai, makes a womaniser/rich man act effeminate. Remember the “kuppathu porikki pasanga” stereotype from Mudhalvan? Now they’re apparently youngsters with bright-coloured hair hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet and abusing people online. Ever accessed the government’s welfare schemes, dubbed freebies? Well, according to the film, you should be ashamed of being bribed to overlook substandard governance.

A scene features an unskilled doctor looking for the patient’s appendix while operating on her from her back. The film milks this caricaturish portrayal of a doctor for an emotional sequence. But it strays away from talking about more pressing issues like the NEET fiasco that’s straining the future of medical professionals in the country. In another instance, Shankar equates the snitching of a man taking lakhs of rupees as a bribe with a fisherwoman who is caught for adding weight to increase her catch’s price. In the filmmaker’s Garuda Purana — as Anniyan mentions in his film — crime is not a vest to be measured as small, large and extra large. While a similar wealthy official who gets arrested for corruption walks scot-free the same day, the film never tells us the fate of those caught akin to the fisherwoman. Shankar’s solutions to issues have mostly been authoritative and idealistic, but they seldom look at the grassroots-level causes behind them. Yet, his skewered take on everyday issues is the least of Indian 2’s worries.

Unlike Indian, the sequel takes the war against corruption across the country. You know the film isn’t fooling around when the smoking and drinking statutory warnings are replaced with a line that goes, “Corruption causes cancer to the nation”. While the film showcases a rogues’ gallery of villains from different states— indulging in everything from granite scams to recruitment scams — none of the punishments meted out to them feel as cathartic as the ones we saw in the original film. The fact that they range from singing non-stop till they drop dead or running like a horse (complete with neighing noises, I kid you not) till they die of exhaustion isn’t exactly as menacing as what Shankar does with villains in his older films.

Apart from Kamal, it’s Siddharth along with his gang of friends, played by Priya Bhavani Shankar, Jagan and Rishikanth, who get most of the screen-time, but their trials and tribulations never hit us hard, unlike what the character of Manorama goes through in Indian. The fact that all it takes is one worldwide trending hashtag, #ComeBackIndian, for Senapathy to end his vanavaas and come to India, and another trend #GoBackIndian for the whole nation to vouch against our hero, feels extremely artificial.

What hurts the most are two aspects: how the grandeur Shankar is known for falls like a house of cards when not backed with a sturdy plot and how the very character of Senapathy is altered to make the umpteen theories that floated online before the film’s release sound better. For starters, the visually stunning ‘Calendar Song’, or any song for that matter, add no value to the film. And when Senapathy, chased by a gang of goons, runs inside a glass-making company, you can almost hear late Vivek’s line from Vedi, “Welcome to fight location” in your ears. Senapathy, in 1996’s Indian, was an old, hunched man whose superpower, apart from varma kalai, was to look like any other individual and that gave him the cover to make his kills and escape without a trace. In Indian 2, though, he’s seen jumping walls, intruding impenetrable places, fighting an assemblage of baddies and even escaping with an electric unicycle in a tediously long chase sequence.

A still from ‘Indian 2’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

A brilliant Krishnaswamy (Nedumudi Venu) proved to be a worthy enemy to Senapathy in the original film. But in Indian 2, his son Pramod (Bobby Simha) is just another typical Tamil film cop primarily used by Senapathy to call out nepotism similar to varisu arasiyal. Similarly, SJ Suryah, who we assume is the main antagonist in the next sequel, appears merely for seconds just like other veterans like Brahmanandam. Even the dialogues don’t work in favour of the film; we are attacked with lines like ‘idhu karumam illa, varumam’ and ‘soththu kaga oduna nee ippo death kaga odu’.

Finally, you know a film is in deep trouble these days when even Anirudh can’t salvage it with his score. Interestingly, Indian 2 reuses a lot of AR Rahman’s original score; not only does it work brilliantly, but also makes for some of the best moments in the film.

And speaking of earlier outings, the references to Shankar and Kamal’s previous works, especially Indian, are aplenty, including a homage of sorts to Goundamani and Senthil. But despite a barrage of ideas that usually work wonders in Shankar’s projects, most of them fall flat thanks to an uninteresting treatment that stretches the sequel to two films. A glimpse at the end teases what’s in store in Indian 3…. this 140-odd-second clip delivers what the 180-minute film couldn’t. Banking on the nostalgic value of its predecessor and a visibly intriguing sequel that’s coming up next year, Indian 2 struggles to be relevant and entertaining. More than #ComeBackIndian, we hope Indian 3 will be a comeback for the veteran filmmaker and the legendary actor.

Indian 2 is currently running in theatres