Shankar’s ‘Indian 2’ has a solid premise that’s undone by vague, unfocused, uninteresting execution

The film stars Kamal Haasan, Siddharth, Priya Bhavani Shankar, Bobby Simha. The screenplay is flat, and we are forced to endure generic lectures about corruption.

In 1987, in Nayakan, Kamal Haasan played a character who believed in extrajudicial killings. Whether he did these killings himself or delegated them to his henchmen is another matter. The fact is that he did not believe in the law; he believed that he was the law. But his daughter, and the film, raised this question: Who are you to decide right and wrong? Who are you to punish people? Cut to 1996, and we get Kamal Haasan in Indian, once again as a character that believes in extrajudicial killings, or vigilante justice. Only, now, he is celebrated for these murders, which he does all by himself. The film is not concerned with whether he is right or wrong, nallavana / kettavana. The only matter of interest is the thrill of punishment.

And now, in 2024, in Indian 2, the Kamal Haasan character – who must be over a hundred years old – comes full circle. Once again, he is questioned about his principles, his beliefs, his methods. The premise is solid. Senapathy comes out of exile and asks the youth of India to expose the corruption inside their own homes. He expects everyone to be as devoted to the idea of social justice as he is. But the tide turns when these youngsters realise that they are not a Senapathy, who could coolly kill his corrupt son and sleep soundly. What if family matters more? What if their “social justice” principles are at the armchair-warrior level, and vanish when they see the very brutal consequences of fighting for justice? What if you are the kind of person who cannot sleep soundly after killing your own son?

The tragedy of Indian 2 is that this premise kicks in way too late, well into the second half of the film. And until then, we are forced to endure the same old lectures about corruption that Shankar has been feeding us for decades. There’s a clever opening. Instead of the usual tobacco/alcohol warning, we hear Kamal Haasan’s voice saying: “Corruption causes cancer to the nation. Corruption kills.” But thereon, it’s business as usual. We see a Swachh Bharat (Clean India) hoarding. The camera pulls back, and across the street, we see a man peeing in public. And then, we get one form of non-Swachh Bharat after another. The health industry is unclean, the education industry is unclean, the medical industry is unclean, the granite-mining industry is unclean – heck, even the anti-corruption bureau is unclean.

Chitra (Siddharth) runs a mini-Swachh Bharat mission through his YouTube channel. Priya Bhavani Shankar and Jagan are part of his team. They witness some trademark Shankar happenings – a wronged woman kills herself, a loan shark threatens to post nude pictures of the women of a family – and they are outraged. They decide that the only person capable of Cleaning India is Senapathy, aka Indian Thatha, whose legend has now spread across the nation. The man (settled abroad) comes to India and advises youngsters to clean up their own families, while he takes up the task of Cleaning India. For instance, he enters a gold room and takes on a corrupt Gujarati businessman, by using his varma kalai to make the man gallop like a horse. Alas, I wish I was making this up. This actually happens – and more. The dreaded martial art is reduced to a running (and galloping) joke.

There is nothing that a focused screenplay could not have fixed. Let’s say we stay with Chitra. Let’s say we see his journey as an activist in contrast with Senapathy’s journey as an activist. Just like the older man had a family, Chitra has a mother and father – and like Senapathy, Chitra is forced to take some tough calls. You could even say that Chitra is the Senapathy of the smartphone era. The difference is that he won’t kill people. So how do these two people collide, this older man and this younger man who want the same thing – a Clean India – but in different ways? Okay, for commercial purposes, you bring in a love interest for Chitra, played by Rakul Preet Singh. And there’s a running thread in the form of a cartoon character, a modern-day version of RK Laxman’s common man. Sounds nice?

But the writing, here, is all over the place, and it is hard to care for anything or anyone. Chitra comes and goes as he pleases. Senapathy comes and goes as he pleases. Bobby Simha, as the cop after Senapathy, comes and goes as he pleases. For the longest time, there is no interesting narrative thread binding all these people and the things they do. We just keep jumping from scene to generic scene, lecture to generic lecture, and there is a ton of repetition. It’s really enough to show one character investigating their family to see if someone is corrupt. Instead, we see four characters doing the same thing, in different scenes. It’s really enough if one character gets a scolding from a parent for exposing their illegal activities. But here, two characters get to undergo the exact same thing. No wonder the film runs three hours.

Kalidas Jayaram, Marimuthu, Rakul Preet Singh, Nedumudi Venu, and many others just come and go. Vivek gets to play a cop, and he gets one of his patented rhyming lines (about Senapathy): “Naatta vittu poyum not out aa…” As comedy, it isn’t a great punch, but I got a little nostalgic seeing the actor. But the old-style melodrama did not make me nostalgic at all, whether it is the reason Chitra has his name (some amma sentiment there), or a perfectly independent young woman being told that no one will marry her if her family name is spoiled. I kept thinking at least the set pieces would deliver, but an anti-gravity scene – for instance – is just talk, talk, and more talk. The film seems more like a remake than a continuation. Whether it is a screenplay thing or an editing thing I can’t say, but Indian 2 tries something new for a Shankar film: the big set pieces are cross-cut with other happenings. It doesn’t work.

Even Senapathy’s introduction is a bit of cross-cutting, towards the end of an Anirudh song. So the narrative pattern is like this: the song sequence goes on for a while as just a song sequence, then we get a glimpse of the hero, then the song ends and we see the hero with the villain we saw in the song. (This man is as generic and as forgettable as all the other bad guys in the movie.) I felt the sequence where Senapathy returns to India would have made a much better introduction scene, given that it brings back the past (Nedumudi Venu), the future (Bobby Simha), and acts of mass-heroism. Anyway, Kamal Haasan hardly gets any room to flex his skills. The character is one-note, and because he is invincible, there is zero suspense about his fate. The “poyi pulla kuttigala padikka vainga da” line from Thevar Magan – used by a character here – doesn’t help, either. One, it reminds us of a far better film. Two, it takes us out of the tragic moment in this film.

Maybe, as the actor has said repeatedly, Part 3 is where the meat of the story is – and we do get a glimpse of the next instalment during the closing credits. Siddharth gets one chunk of screen time to shine, after a tragedy – otherwise, the cast (including the extras) is reduced to lots of bad, broad, generic acting. SJ Suryah is the only performer who – even with his very limited screen time – shows promise. He is a bad man covered in bling, and I wished for more screen time with him. Oh well! By the end, I kept thinking about Anniyan or even I, where the same old vigilante ideas were energised by new-ish concepts like schizophrenia and physical deformity. And Shankar’s films always had that personal touch: we empathised with Senapathy in the first film because his happy family was destroyed and he went after the people responsible. Here, he is just randomly killing random evil people. I think it is also a bit of fatigue from my side, when films have come to act as trailers for the next part, without seeming complete on their own. I understand the need to make money in an uncertain movie climate, but does this mean the movie should suffer in the process?