Indian 2 led by Kamal Haasan and directed by S Shankar follows up on the 1996 release and explores a similar story as before in today’s time. However, with its run time, the film takes too big of a liberty. With a 180-minute-long film, it leaves the audience stuck in the theatre for too long without a satisfying end to the story. The plotline doesn’t end but leaves it on a cliffhanger for another sequel.
It follows a group of youngers running a YouTube channel taking down local corrupt officers by gathering evidence and making funny skits about it. They soon find out the videos with millions of views led to no real results. Officers arrested for corruption were led out days later, and the people they attempted to help were left with nowhere to go. Disappointed in themself and the system, they start a new campaign all over India to call the freedom fighter from 1996 who once took down corrupt officers.
He makes himself known to the world after taking down his first victim, the owner of a company which led to the death of a young boy who couldn’t pay off his education loan due to corruption. He then returns to India and begins to spread the message about how everyone could take down corruption by reporting anyone around them even their families. Bringing everyone on the right path is the only way to end corruption.
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The makers do have a good plotline at the center of the story. It follows the hero of India from 1996 and compares it to India’s current situation –in terms of corruption, technological advances, social expectations and more. While the old film deemed him as the Saviour, the new one explores the complications with his viewpoint on how to clean the country. We see people following through on his advice and facing bigger problems in return.
The film also looks at the system corruption and how difficult it is to break it. But the film’s lengthy screenplay with unnecessarily long car chases and dance numbers takes the fun out of it. The first half features two dance numbers one of which shows off half-naked women dancing for a shoot for a calendar hosted by one of the villains. The villain introduction and later each of their death’s takes over more than half of the runtime in the film.
Kamal Haasan is fun to watch under all the prosthetics and CG for nostalgic reasons, but he lacks chemistry with any characters around him. What saves the film a bit is Siddharth’s emotional performance in the second half.
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Overall, Indian 2 is too long for the nostalgia of a two decade old character to sustain its audience.
Cover artwork by Patrick Gawande/Mashable India
