Review: ‘Indian 2,’ starring Kamal Haasan, Siddharth, S. J. Suryah and Rakul Preet Singh

July 16, 2024

by Carla Hay

Kamal Haasan in “Indian 2” (Photo courtesy of Red Giant Movies)

“Indian 2”

Directed by S. Shankar

Tamil with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of India, the action film “Indian 2” (a sequel to 1996’s “Indian”) features an all-Indian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Four young adult YouTubers coax an outlaw vigilante to come out of hiding after he disappeared for 28 years, and the vigilante and his YouTube supporters go on the hunt to get justice for corruption.  

Culture Audience: “Indian 2” will appeal primarily to people are fans of the first “Indian” movie and mindless vigilante stories.

Siddharth in “Indian 2” (Photo courtesy of Red Giant Movies)

“Indian 2” is nothing but a bloated mess. This idiotic and unnecessary sequel has tiresome clichés about a vigilante and his minions, who want corrupt people to be punished. The real punishment is watching this entire three-hour cinematic abomination. “Indian 2” (which is also titled “India 2: Zero Tolerance”) is filled with stupid-looking action sequences, hollow characters with no development, and time-wasting, reptetive scenes that didn’t need to be in the movie at all.

Written and directed by S. Shankar, “Indian 2” is a sequel to the 1996 action film “Indian,” which was directed and co-written by Shankar. Kamal Haasan reprises his role as vigilante Veerasekharan Senapathy, who is a former Indian National Army agent and who has the nickname Indian. The plot of “Indian 2” is so flimsy, it didn’t need to be a three-hour movie. This overlong running time makes the terrible movie even more irritating.

“Indian 2” (which takes place in various part of India) begins by showing four YouTuber friends in their 20s: Chitra Aravindhan (played by Siddharth), Aarthi Thangavel (played by Priya Bhavani Shankar), Thembash (played by Jagan) and Harish (played by Rishikanth). The four pals have a YouTube channel called Barking Dogs, which does political satires that poke fun at officials and leaders who are caught doing unethical things. These YouTubers use a lot of animation for their YouTube content.

Chitra, the leader of the Barking Dogs team, has a strong sense of morality and likes to help protect or defend underdogs. The other members of the Barking Dogs team have similar values. These values will be tested when they start investigating corruption that is very close to home.

One day, the community experiences a shocking and tragic event. A young woman named Sunitha flings herself off of a balcony and dies instantly. Chitra is one of the people on the street who witnessed this suicide.

Sunitha’s grieving brother tells the gathered crowd that Sunitha killed herself because corrupt officials demanded that she pay them bribes. When Sunitha refused, the officials told people that her college degree was fake. Sunitha couldn’t bear the shame, so she committed suicide.

Aside from all the illogical problems of this storyline (such as: colleges keep verifiable records of who graduated), the movie then stages an unrealistic impromptu protest at the suicide scene to have these corrupt officials arrested. Chitra is one of the most vocal people leading this protest, which also includes Arthi, Thembash and Harish.

The four friends get arrested and are bailed out by Chitra’s affluent girlfriend Disha (played by Rakul Preet Singh), who supports their cause but cautions them that they alone can’t change the world. Chitra, Arthi, Thembash and Harish get together and begin to wonder whatever happened to Indian, who made news for the events that happened in the “Indian” movie, but Indian has been missing since 1996. The four friends think that they should enlist the help of Indian, but they need to find him first.

Chitra comes up with the idea to start a social media campaign using the hashtag #ComeBackIndian. And sure enough, Indian finds out about the campaign, comes out of hiding. In an effort to look “modern,” Indian makes a social media video that he says is specifically aimed people under the age of 40. In this video, Indian makes a rallying statement for people to become social justice warriors against corruption by turning in corrupt people to the authorities.

The Barking Dogs friends take this advice to heart and start investigating people in their own family. Chitra’s father Varadharajan (played by Samuthirakani) is a police officer. Harish visits his uncle’s motel and discovers they serve stale food to customers. Thembash finds out that his brother-in-law, Nanjunda Moorthy, accepts bribes from customers, as does Aarthi’s mother, Kanagalatha.

Meanwhile, Indian doles out his own type of justice, which is often violent. Indian is a master of disguises and has hypnosis skills. And apparently, based on the movie’s very fake-looking action scenes, Indian also has superhuman-level strength and agility. One of the things that Indian likes to do in his hypnosis tricks is make people under hypnosis think that they are horses, and he tells them to run for the rest of their lives.

India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been on the hunt for Indian for the past 28 years because of what happened in the first “Indian” movie. Now that Indian as resurfaced, two CBI agents named Pramod Krishnaswamy (played by Bobby Simha) and Elango (played by Vivek) have been assigned to find and capture Indian. It should come as no surprise that Pramod and Elango repeatedly bungle the task, as Indian remains elusive. Why else would this bloated movie be three hours long?

One of the many problems with this disjointed movie is that the four Barking Dogs friends mostly work separately from Indian. There are large chunks of the movie that seem to completely forget all about the Barking Dogs friends. The separate storylines in “Indian 2” clumsily fail to blend cohesively when Indian and the Barking Dogs friends share the same scenes.

Most of the corruption in the movie’s ill-conceived plot has to do with bribery. The movie quickly becomes bogged down in unimaginative, repetitive scenarios of Indian donning disguises and doing his hypnosis tricks. There’s at least one other person who commits suicide out of “shame” related to corruption accusations. “Indian 2” also has a few bombastic song-and-dance musical scenes that look out-of-place and have forgettable songs.

The action sequences in “Indian 2” relentlessly insult viewers’ intelligence. Viewers are expected to believe that when Indian is cornered by about 20 muscular men in a fight, the men will stand around and take turns to get a chance to fight Indian. In reality, anyone who’s outnumbered this way would be quickly ganged up on and defeated, unless their opponent has a weapon that the others don’t.

One of the phoniest-looking action sequences is toward the end of the movie, when someone makes an escape by riding a unicycle. Viewers are expected to believe that this unicucle can outpace all the cars chasing after this unicyle. The person making the escape also does flips ona tunnel wall during this vehicle chase.

None of the acting performances in “Indian 2” is special. Some of it is downright awful. This movie clearly had a sizeable budget that was spent on production design (often gaudy) and visual effects (often fake-looking), but the movie’s production budget didn’t buy good film editing. There’s so much quick-cutting film editing that’s meant to make “Indian 2” look fast-paced, but it just looks like amateurish editing that can’t fix this abysmal screenplay.

Even with this choppy editing, “Indian 2” drags and gets boring because there’s so little substance to the movie’s story, which has a horrendous ending. A mid-credits montage gives a montage preview of what to expect in 2025’s “Indian 3,” and it looks just as awful as “Indian 2.” You’ve been warned.

Red Giant Movies released “Indian 2” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on July 12, 2024.

Review: ‘Rathnam’ (2024), starring Vishal and Priya Bhavani Shankar

May 5, 2024

by Carla Hay

Vishal and Priya Bhavani Shankar in “Rathnam” (Photo courtesy of Ayngaran International)

“Rathnam” (2024)

Directed by Hari

Tamil with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Vellore, India, the action film “Rathnam” features an Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: An enforcer for a Member of the Legislative Assembly gets caught up in a violent feud with corrupt businessmen who want to steal land ownership from a group of villagers. 

Culture Audience: “Rathnam” will appeal primarily who are fans of the movie’s headliners and don’t mind watching idiotic action movies that are too long.

Murali Sharma in “Rathnam” (Photo courtesy of Ayngaran International)

“Rathnam” is just another long-winded, repetitive and idiotic action flick with no surprises and no soul. The movie has an unappealing subplot about the shallow “hero” falling in love with a woman who looks exactly like his dead mother. Other than that bizarre part of the story, “Rathnam” has the typical barrage of unrealistic fight scenes and murderous revenge schemes. It’s all becomes so dull and tiresome after a while. And it’s made worse by the movie’s too-long runtime of 155 minutes.

Written and directed by Hari, “Rathnam” (which takes place in Vellore, India) is the fourth movie collaboration for Hari and star Vishal. They previously worked together on 2007’s “Thaamirabharani,” 2014’s “Poojai” and 2022’s “Yaanai.” Vishal portrays the title character in “Rathnam,” which means “gem” in Tamil. This movie is far from being a gem-like treasure. It’s trash.

“Rathnam” begins with a flashback to 1994, by showing how a group of three bandits commit robberies on the road. The three thieves throw eggs at the windshields of passing vehicles on isolated roads, to get the drivers to lose control of the vehicles and crash. The thieves then swoop in and rob the people in the crashed vehicles, regardless if the people are dead or alive.

The thieves use this heinous robbery tactic on a bus, which crashes and kills a total of 26 people. The thieves rob the dead and dying people before escaping. Later, when police try to catch the robbers on a cliff road, eggs are thrown on the police car’s windshield, and the police car falls over the cliff.

The movie then fast-forwards to 2024. Vellore is plagued by corruption from several politicians and business owners. Rathnam works as an enforcer for a Member the Legislative Assembly named Panneer Selvam (played by Samuthirakani), who sends Rathnam to do a lot of Panneer’s dirty work.

One of these criminal politcians is a council member named Babu Reddy (played by Pondy Ravi), who is seen trying to sexually assault a kidnapped teenage schoolgirl while he’s driving her in his Jeep. She jumps out of the vehicle to escape and ends up in a hospital, where police have been called to interview her. Babu Reddy denies anything to do with the crimes he committed against this victim.

The next thing you know, Rathnam and three of his cronies hunt down Babu. Rathnam then kills Babu with a chainsaw. Rathnam’s weapons of choice tend to be anything with blades, because he likes to behead many of his victims. Expect to see many scenes of Rathnam slashing his way through fights by using large knives and machetes.

Fairly early on in the story, Rathnam talks about his past to explain why he turned out to be the person he is. When he was 5 years old, Rathnam and his mother Loganayagi (played by Priya Bhavani Shankar) were kidnapped. The kidnappers forced Rathnam’s mother to become a sex slave. She became an outcast in their community and committed suicide (by hanging herself) out of shame. “Rathnam” has some other flashbacks to his family’s past, with the flashbacks showing relatives such as Rathnam’s father (played by Ganesh Venkatraman) and Rathnam’s grandfather (played by Y. Gee. Mahendra).

Meanwhile, in the present day, three ruthless brothers have been bullying the villagers to sign over land to them. This dastardly trio of brothers are Beema Rayudu (played by Murali Sharma), Subba Rayudu (played by Hareesh Peradi) and Raghava Rayudu (played by Vettai Muthukumar), who have a connection to Rathnam’s past that won’t be revealed in this review. The villagers who don’t comply are at risk of being murdered by the Rayudu brothers, who have a large group of thugs working for them.

Rathnam’s love interest is a medical student named Malliga (also played by Shankar), whose father Vedha Nayagam (played by Jayaprakash) and unnamed grandfather (played by Vijayakumar) are among the outspoken villagers who are resisting the threats and attacks from the Rayudu brothers. Rathnam is immediately smitten with Malliga the first time that he sees her because she looks identical to his dead mother. When Malliga finds out about this uncanny resemblance, she doesn’t think it’s creepy at all that Rathnam is attracted to her in part because she looks like his mother.

Rathnam and Malliga have a volatile relationship where they break up and get back together multiple times. Rathnam is very jealous and possessive and can fly into a rage if he thinks Malliga is having “impure” thoughts about another man. The movie tries to make this relationship look romantic when it’s actually an emotionally abusive and dysfunctional relationship.

“Rathnam” is filled with ridiculous fight scenes where Rathnam has unexplained superhuman strength and abilities. When he is outnumbered by opponents, the opponents just stand around and watch while Rathnam takes on one man at a time. It’s all such idiotic and lazy filmmaking. There’s nothing about “Rathnam” that can be described as “great” or “very good.” It’s all just a parade of mediocre-to-bad everything that is not worth the time of anyone who wants to see an entertaining action movie.

Ayngaran International released “Rathnam” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on April 26, 2024.

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