Before it plummets off a ledge by abandoning a decent concept and throwing away all of the ideals it set forth in the early going, the unnecessary sequel Indian 2 (a.k.a. Hindustani 2 in some local markets) isn’t that bad of a piece of mainstream baiting Tamil language cinema. Coming almost a full thirty years after the original film – about a soldier and freedom fighter turned corruption battling vigilante – Indian 2 would work much better as an off-shoot, remake, or stand-alone story than it does a direct sequel. This re-teaming of star Kamal Haasan and director Shankar still shows some gas left in the tank for both talents, but it’s hard not to wish that everyone involved had just done something different instead.
A group of millennial aged friends and activists who call themselves The Barking Dogs have created a satirical YouTube channel designed to call out corruption, bribery, and corner-cutting at all levels of local and national government. They decry lack of public funding and services, lazy garbage collection, negligent doctors, police brutality, violence against women, pay-to-play hiring practices, brutal student loan repayments, all from the perspective of the under-40 crowd and with the help of an animated elderly character known as The Common Man. While their videos get people talking and rack up healthy numbers of views, these young people are fed up by the fact that they still aren’t affecting real change and inspiring others to get involved in reforms. They begin a social media campaign to bring back “The Old Man” Senapathy (Haasan) to help clean up the streets. Their hero has been paying close attention to their outrage, and agrees to come back into the fold, but after an initial bout of success and traction, the friends are forced to make some hard decisions that will make them regret having asked for help in the first place.
Indian 2 (subtitled Zero Tolerance) gets off to an intriguing, if imperfect start. The mixture of broad humour, brutal tragedy, and cartoonish violence doesn’t work as well as it used to, and for all its talk of trying to engage a new generation of activists, Indian 2 feels old fashioned and out of date, right down to an unnecessarily hammy musical sequence that’s a poorly crafted parody of a product placement laden music videos. Ditto the hero’s propensity for making victims do unusual things until they eventually drop dead, which lands as too hokey for modern sensibilities. The action sequences are well handled (especially an extensive, jaw-dropping chase scene involving a motorized unicycle), even if Shankar has to work overtime hiding his aging star’s physical limitations. The scale is impressive, and the social ills being called out are topics that speak to a wide range of viewers, making them hard to argue against. The musical score from Anirudh Ravichander isn’t up to the high standard set by A.R. Rahman’s original, but it’s serviceable.
In its better moments, Indian 2 presents like a decent throwback to a bygone era of blockbuster filmmaking from the subcontinent, but it never fully works as a sequel. The bits with Senapathy carrying out his revenge are preachy, repetitive and overlong, but the stuff with the younger characters is more interesting and narratively rich. Indian 2 feels every bit like a great hook for a story that has been retrofitted into sequel bait (with more on the way, if this film’s final moments are to be believed). In an era where political and social activism is proving more vital and important than ever before, the plot revolving around young people learning that change sometimes comes with tremendous personal sacrifice is resounding and thoughtful. All of the old school vigilante stuff is cartoonish retreads of the same-old-same-old, and Shankar’s backwards attitudes towards sexuality, masculinity, gender roles, and class are still stuck well in the past. Indian 2 becomes a movie that’s often at war with itself, not a story that has any genuinely lasting messaging.
Things chug along well enough until just around the time intermission hits (well into the film’s three hour run time), and then Indian 2 stops being engaging and starts getting boring. Although that spectacular chase scene I mentioned earlier comes later in the film, it’s not enough to keep Indian 2 from feeling padded and repetitive. It also takes a wishy-washy tone that undercuts the conviction of the story itself. It suggests that the kids have to make huge sacrifices, but the old man has paid his dues and can operate with complete impunity, which only sounds worse the longer the viewer thinks about how that’s supposed to work. Those familiar with the big twist in the first film can bet on Shankar trying something similar here, to much more frustrating and manipulative results that still fail to move the dramatic needle.
Indian 2 is a let down, with fresh ingredients mixed in with bloody carrion that has been baking in the hot sun for too long. If it wasn’t so concerned with providing a nostalgic, past-its-prime burst of energy, Shankar’s latest could’ve been a return to form for the director. But if it didn’t have that going for it, this also wouldn’t be Indian 2. Instead of settling for a good sequel or something original, Indian 2 lands in a mucky middle ground that offers only fleeting delights and hints of a better idea buried under a lot of unnecessary dross.
Indian 2 is now playing in select cinemas, including at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto.
