- Release Date: 12/07/2024
- Cast: Kamal Haasan, Siddharth, Rakul Preet Singh, Bobby Simha, Samuthirakani
- Director: S. Shankar
This Could Be Shankar’s Worst Film to Date
S. Shankar’s Hindustani was released in 1996 and still holds a special place in my heart. It was one of the wackiest and most thought-provoking films of the 1990s. It had its share of eccentricities but was peppered with copious amounts of patriotism, revenge, inspirational drama, true romance, and emotions that the wackiness felt bearable and sometimes even enjoyable. The film had flair and scope, and above all, its director knew the limitations of having a protagonist who was as old as the country itself. Shankar carefully designed the spectacle around this protagonist, justifying his every action and giving us enough logic and reason behind the things that he was shown doing.
The film felt divided into two distinct portions, one of which was deadly serious while the other was loud and comedic. These two portions never overlapped, and hence the film never got to a point where one would question the authenticity and realism of the real problems that the film depicted its protagonist dealing with. The tragedy of the film was heartbreaking. The romance was genuine. The drama was heart-wrenching, punctuated by a terrific A.R. Rahman score and pitch-perfect production design, cinematography, and editing.
I walked into Hindustani 2 with similar expectations even though the trailer of the film gave ominous tidings with its lack of charisma, terrible performances, and almost no novelty in terms of presentation, story, drama, or characters. However, nothing in the world could prepare me for the unmitigated disaster that this film turned out to be. I almost felt criminal for having dragged a dear brother of mine to the screening who had shared an early review of the film and wanted to warn me politely that we might be walking into a disaster. I still presented a brave face and asked him to come along when every cinematic sense in me was telling me that this was going to be a stinker and what a stinker it ended up being.
I am getting increasingly frustrated with the crass comedy that every South Indian state is forcefully injecting its serious films with. I don’t understand what this fascination is with incorporating poorly written comedy in what should have been some of the most serious sequences of the film. The “Varma Kala” martial arts form in the first film was used as a deadly weapon, and it was also something that made Senapathi (Kamal Haasan) a terrifying adversary to deal with. The power and deadly nature of the martial arts were punctuated by Shankar by capturing every blow that Senapathi delivered in slow motion, carefully showing the hand movements and their devastating results. In Hindustani 2, Varma Kala is a source of comedy. Senapathi uses it on Gulshan Grover, and he turns into a feminine character. Senapathi goes on to use it on another character played by Zakir Hussain, and he literally turns into a man who resembles a horse and starts galloping and kicking others on his way to his death. Another individual starts singing classical music and sings until he breathes his last. I have no idea what Shankar was trying to achieve with set pieces like these, but this immediately took me permanently out of the experience, and then there was nothing that Shankar could do that would keep me invested in the story and make me take it seriously.
Senapathi was a serious and tormented man in Hindustani. He endured World War II and the death of his daughter and then was forced to kill his own son. All this rendered the man into someone who was weighed down by the past. In Hindustani 2, he is a hyperactive cartoonish character who prances around and cracks jokes that are as pleasurable as a root canal. He moves and behaves in a way that is reminiscent of the TikTokers and YouTubers who we have come to identify as “Chapri”. There is neither any seriousness to his character nor does he have the kind of poignance that would have made the character at least watchable. One also has to agree that Kamal Haasan showed zero interest in infusing any realism or life into the character. He had a few boxes to check and did just that, and then was on his way out.
The portion involving Siddhartha, Rakul Preet Singh, and some other characters is written out of headlines and newspaper articles as mentioned in the opening credits of the film, and they are envisioned and laid out with zero impact. For these portions to work, the characters needed to form genuine connections with the audience and for this to happen, the performances and the writing had to be strong and organic. That was not the case. These portions felt like highlight reels from a melodramatic news channel where the emphasis was so much on vilifying the antagonists that there were portions when it felt as if the wrongdoings being shown were cartoonish and impossible to pull off in the real world. This seriously damaged the credibility of the film and turned it into a mess from which there was no escape. This portion works as the precursor to the arrival of Senapathi. With the failure of this portion, the part of the film that needed to be inspiring turned out to be predictable and awkward. There was absolutely no fanfare or heightened emotions complimenting the arrival of the hero and this was shocking.
For a film that is a sequel to Hindustani, Hindustani 2 has very little action. The action sequences in the first half are all caricatures that document the loss of touch of its director and make no sense whatsoever. The final 20-30 minutes of the film have some action that still is not able to uplift an already sinking ship. This portion shows that with some more effort and logic, Shankar could have done justice to the action of the film, but for some strange reason, he didn’t. The infusion of comedy in every action sequence liquidates the seriousness from these actions and, most importantly, drains any drama or emotions from the proceedings, thereby turning the action into lifeless and pitiful pranks pulled on the audience who had come in expecting something in line with the original.
The film lacks credible writing. The background score and music are the worst that I have seen from Anirudh. A large portion of it is rehashed from the original score, and most of it is not even used with the kind of gusto and proficiency that was needed to infuse a sense of hero worship or inspiration in the audience for the character of Senapathi. The film does try to have a large canvas, but its storytelling and presentation are so outdated, uninspiring, and laughably bad that nothing works in its favour. I do have to admit that the story did have merit, and the idea of using the new generation to flush out crime and criminals in their own household was a unique concept, and its further exploration would have made for an interesting viewing. However, the kind of treatment we get here and the writing of the characters and their dialogues are so horrible that it takes down a perfectly intriguing story, along with the hopes of all the fans of the original Hindustani.
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Even after all this, I have to admit that I am mildly intrigued by what I saw in the trailer for the 3rd instalment of the franchise. Hindustani 3 is looking interesting, and if they can do away with the oxymoronic humour and create a serious and grounded spectacle with an emphasis on the struggle and triumph of the protagonist, we might just have a third film in the franchise that culminates the series satisfactorily. Fingers crossed.
Rating: 1/5 (1 out of 5 stars)
The views expressed in this article are that of the reviewer and do not reflect EastMojo’s position.
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