'Indian 2' movie review: Go back, Indian

What does Senapathy feel about having to clean up his society all over again? This film presents him as though he were rather amused by it all. The police almost catch him when he lands in India, but he escapes and before doing so, meows at them. Senapathy didn’t seem like a man who enjoyed his kills; he did it because he knew no other way. It’s a disagreeable strategy, but this man is flawed, given that he spent his youth in a time of war. Where is such detailing here? Where is any reference to his family? Perhaps the idea was for Indian 2 to skip all personal angles and jump straight into becoming a ‘social’ film. Where then is the deep socio-psychological commentary on our society and its people? From out of nowhere, Senapathy comes up with the brainwave of inspiring people to rat on their near and dear ones—and it’s an idea that could well have been the theme of this whole film. Senapathy thinks country first, but what’s a country if not its many units of people? How do you get people to look past their families? The portion that touches upon this late into the second half is the film’s best. Shankar’s Indian deserved a sequel that was ready to sink into nuances, but Indian 2 doesn’t even address the fundamental question of whether a black-or-white extremist can understand/inspire the greyness of his country’s people.

Even the manner of Senapathy’s executions in this film is laughably childish. In the first film, you got the haunting image of a killed man, whose mouth fills up with rice spilling from a sack. Here, one victim trots like a horse on the road. Another becomes feminine—and all of this is supposed to make us laugh. Bobby Simha, playing Pramod, is restricted to looking rather irritated from start to finish. If this were a film interested in anyone’s emotions, it would focus on telling us why for Pramod, catching Senapathy is a ‘life ambition’. Instead, we get a 100-something man racing along on a unicycle for what seems like an eternity. The director’s films aren’t exactly remembered for well-informed politics, considering they aim to offer populist catharsis. But you still don’t expect a dig at government freebies. I suppose nuances of social equality are tall ask for a film whose protagonist’s important dialogue comes with fundamental lip-sync issues. You know a film is not working when even the late Vivekh struggles to get going with his one-liners. The man, known for dropping nuggets of knowledge in his humour, uses light-year as a unit of time (when it’s a unit of distance)—but as I said, nothing really works in Indian 2.

You know how sometimes a sequel is called a ‘spiritual sequel’? Indian 2 can be called a deeply dispiriting sequel, I think; it’s a film that shows almost no understanding of the soul and strength of the first film and its protagonist. For these reasons, it’s really hard not to join the chorus of citizens in this film as they fling objects at the protagonist and yell, “Go back Indian!”

Film: Indian 2

Director: Shankar

Cast: Kamal Haasan, Siddharth, Vivekh, Jagan, Priya Bhavani Shankar, Samuthirakani

Rating: 1.5/5 stars