Shankar, yet again, establishes himself as a preeminent film director from India and the most audacious, on the block. As credits flash in bottom third of the screen dwarfed by boisterous finale (song) in the top two thirds of the screen, for over 5 minutes, if one can stay focused on names and institutions that had a role to play in making of this visual extravaganza, it would seem as if Shankar was no less than a Mayor of a mini metropolis – with different councils, boroughs, hamlets, suburbs, high streets, metro lines, buses, undergrounds, roads, ports and what not – and get them all to work in tandem delivering precisely their part, while it was all in his head that the aerial view would resemble a functional city that we can relate to! Spellbinding. He delivers where most may have difficulty even imagining!
Most Rajnikant fans know that he is a director’s actor, never exceeding the brief, while maximising his impact with style, screen presence and crisp dialogue delivery. Somehow, this was the first movie in which his pace of dialogues comes a tad stretched; in some scenes it’s as if one is watching a dubbed movie with retrofitted Tamil dialogues that can’t keep with lip movements of a Hindi speaker given to long pauses! Disappointing also is the wardrobe department – dresses in many frames are a little oversized for his frame and frustrates as the last stale fruit piece one tastes in a medley.
Shankar, for all the razzmatazz and glitz of technology, hasn’t made this movie for technophiles. That he makes amply clear, by refusing to expand the repertoire and by staying focused on a couple of simple messages, throughout. One must credit him for drawing the line where he has and not get carried away! For erudite critics, the plot may seem too simplistic and less nuanced. But then, that’s another way of storytelling too. Spending 10x more on a coffee doesn’t have to make it more viscous!
And then, the usual Shankar-isms are on the palate too, for those who scratch the surface – a very out of place heroine (albeit, as an android) made Tamil enough just with the name (Nila – perhaps as a tribute to late Tamil writer Sujatha’s Nila character in his acclaimed “En Iniya Iynathira”) as much as the name Tamilselvi exonerated the Tamil quotient of the heroine Shriya Sharan in Shivaji, the boss. The carve out of the central characters as some sort of first among equals, in their cocoon (with vests and motif that belong to different era/place) while the world they are burdened to save, carries on in a different milieu and often, in different skin tone too (e.g. the apartment mates of Aishwarya in Enthiran in sharp contrast to the people Chitti will save in different part of the city, including the ill fated girl). Well, one can’t blame Shankar for perpetuating the established stereotypes, especially as he has to hedge the bets of spending containers of money, in multi-lingual release. Sadly, scale deprives the space for ideologues.
The film rolls out real fast, swift and lethal as a flash flood in a parched plain. One is left gasping at the spectacle and pick the aftermath of the deluge, only after leaving the theatre, drenched and still in awe of the blitzkrieg.
While the first part lacked the oomph and fiscal muscle of 2.0, it had a soul that enlivened the screen – be it in witty, crisp stage introduction scene of Chitti or his rapid descent to his menacing persona. 2.0 is gifted with four times as much potency, rivalling any international movie in scale, grandeur and execution of similar budget. However, given Rajnikant’s advancing age and its visible toll in speed, a story that doesn’t attempt to unravel one piece at a time, the result is just ‘awe’ and not ‘shock and awe’ ! One just wishes it carried as much panache as potency.
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