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Release
date:
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November 29, 2018
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Director:
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Shankar
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Cast:
Language:
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Rajinikanth,
Akshay Kumar, Amy Jackson, Adil Hussain, Kalabhavan Shajohn, Sudhanshu
Pandey, Kaizad Kotwal
Tamil
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Note: This is a
review of the Hindi dubbed version of the Tamil film 2.0
There was a time
when the cheep-cheep of sparrows and other birds would wake us up every morning
even in the urban concrete jungles of India. Over time, as humans have
persisted in playing havoc with the environment, those soothing sounds have
gradually died out of our lives. This travesty of natural justice is,
justifiably, a cause of frustration and rage among environmentalists and even
laypersons with basic common sense and self-preservation instincts. Now imagine
a film writer who understands the logic behind their anger, yet takes the
bizarre decision to turn one such green activist into a murderous supervillain
determined to destroy humankind for its callous carelessness.
Writer-director
Shankar does precisely that in his new film 2.0,
sequel to the 2010 blockbuster Enthiran
(Robot) which starred Kollywood giant
Rajinikanth as the well-meaning and brilliant Dr Vasigaran who built the robot
Chitti (Rajini again) for the benefit of humankind. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
played his girlfriend Sana, and Danny Denzongpa was cast as Dr Bohra, who saw
technology merely as a means to fulfill his dreams of great wealth. Despite the
abundance of Tamil commercial cinema clichés, Enthiran had a fun comicbook quality, a substantial story and
absolute clarity about its politics: it was a film on the transmutability of
good and evil, and the risks posed by technology in the hands of immoral
individuals.
2.0 is mixed up to the point of being downright
stupid. As an unexplained force in the film snatches cellphones away from
millions of residents of Chennai, the government turns to the scientist
community for help. Allow me to revive Chitti, says Dr Vasigaran. But the Home Minister reminds him of the
court ruling to dismantle the robot after it had caused death and untold
destruction once Dr Bohra tampered with it for his own selfish ends.
When people start
dying at the hands of a mysterious being though, there is no choice but to get
Chitti back. So far, what we have is a reminder that it is not technology we
must fear but humans who misuse it. Point taken.
The ridiculousness
of 2.0’s politics surfaces only in
the second half. A line uttered early on by Dr Vasigaran, “When people cannot
understand something they either dismiss it as a terrorist attack or the work
of God,” has potential but goes nowhere. Instead, the film becomes not
about machines going out of control (which was a
focal theme of Enthiran) but about
the need to keep righteous human anger in check.
Bollywood star Akshay Kumar – making his Kollywood debut here – plays the
respected ornithologist, Dr Pakshirajan, who gets tired of trying to convince
the government, corporates and ordinary citizens to save our birds by cutting
down on cellphone use. (Spoiler
Alert) Following a series of events, he
metamorphoses into a gorgeously ugly, giant supervillain whose aura combines
with the aura of scores of dead birds and takes on a physical form constructed
by using stolen cellphones as his building blocks. (Spoiler alert ends)
By this stage, Shankar
comes across as being increasingly confused about what he wants to say through
this film. Sadly, his confusion at the scripting stage plays
into the hands of political establishments that, in the real world, are indeed
demonising activists, including environmentalists. This is inexcusable.
Though he struggles
with his storyline, Shankar does show imagination in the conceptualisation of 2.0’s visual effects and action
sequences. Clearly, no expense has been spared in creating them. That said, the
glitz and grandeur become boring after a while in the pre-interval portion as
the story takes forever to take off and the SFX are beset by repetitiveness, as
though a teenaged boy is trying to impress his school buddies with his
brilliance. Cellphones being snatched out of the hands of crowds, a magnificent
river of glittering cellphones flooding the ground – the sight is awe-inspiring
the first time, even the second time, but when the same trick is used again and
again, and then again... Oh c’mon, why didn’t someone snatch the toy out of the
boy’s hands?
The special effects
and stunts pick up only in the final confrontation between Chitti and Dr
Pakshirajan, but it is too late by then. Besides, there is no single person in
the storyline in whom one can be emotionally invested. Dr Vasigaran operates in
the background throughout, Chitti takes centre stage but has more swagger than
soul, and it is impossible to dislike Dr Pakshirajan because his cause is actually
one worth defending.
Besides, Rajinikanth’s performance
is a mixed bag. Even the spotlight on Chitti in 2.0 is driven more by SFX than acting, and the manner in which the
star is tapped is decidedly unsatisfying. 2.0
gives him neither the unrelenting bombast of the standard big-bucks Rajini-starrer,
nor the understatement he is still capable of as we saw so recently in Pa.
Ranjith’s well-conceived, thought-provoking Kaala.
There are only two
worthwhile, albeit
small, roles among the supporting cast. Adil Hussain
lends some dignity to the Minister he plays,
and Kalabhavan Shajohn provides brief comic respite from the otherwise slow-moving proceedings as the corrupt, cold-hearted Minister
Vairamoorthy.
2.0 is a
prime example of the dispensability of women in Indian commercial film sequels.
Sana is reduced to a voice on the phone here, Shankar does not even use Rai
Bachchan’s voice for her, and the woman is still nagging her boyfriend every
single time she calls him while he goes about the important business of saving
the world. Since leading women in Rajinikanth
films these days are anyway rarely
anything but glamorous distractions, she has been
replaced here by the lesser known Amy Jackson who plays a dull, impossibly curvy, Barbie-like robot assistant to Dr Vasigaran called Nila.
As if she is not clichéd enough, she – the sole woman of any
significance here – represents emotion and heart in
the plot, while the men represent reason and scientific thought.
Though it is nice
to see that a Bollywood hit machine like Akshay Kumar wants to expand his
horizons and work in another Indian film industry, it is hard to understand why
he chose this lukewarm role in a tepid film that gives him such limited screen
time – we get to see him properly only after the interval. Kumar tackles Dr Pakshirajan with
conviction, but in the end, the tons of heavy prosthetic make-up and costumes
(if they can be called that) overshadow his personality, star persona and
acting.
There is only one department in which Shankar’s
thoughts seem to be crystal clear: the bow to Rajinikanth’s primacy in the
constellation of male Indian commercial movie stars. As if as an inside joke, a
song playing in the background during the closing battle between Chitti and Pakshirajan uses the words “anaadi khiladi”
which, while it literally translates into “foolish
player” with reference to the bad guy, is
also a reminder of the buzzword long associated with Akshay Kumar’s stardom
since it has appeared in so many of his film titles. It recurs in the
closing song that contains this
line: “Anaadi, khiladi, narak mein teri
jagah hai khaali (Hey you fool, you player, there is a place waiting for
you in hell).” Umm, is this just a coincidence, or was the lyric writer being
intentionally subversive?
Be that as it may,
after this song comes an epilogue featuring Dr Vasigaran and Chhota Chitti
a.k.a. 3.0, which amounts to an announcement of
yet another sequel. Considering how steel cold and yawn-worthy 2.0 is despite its top-notch
special effects, the thought of more Chittis is hardly worth celebrating.
Rating (out
of five stars): *1/2
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CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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146 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/2Point0movie/
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