Shankar’s sci-fi sequel begins in twilight. A wonderfully constructed suicide; it could very well be a testimony to the director himself.
Is the Shankar sun really setting?
If it is, then it really wants us all to remember the previous glory.
2.0 is an oddly stitched together film of mostly “Shankar elements”, who knows this movie can give rise to an ‘Ultimate Shankar Movie Checklist’
Here goes an initial draft:
Shankar’s main vigilante will want to kill people to make things right because no one listens to him- Check
He might use some ancient text/symbol/martial art to justify/aid his killing- Check
Vigilante will compete himself & previous Shankar films in devising improbable deaths- Check
Using common folk to convey the confusion about what is happening on the ground or “public pulse” shots- Check
A set piece in a stadium- Check
Amy Jackson’s ….never mind – Check
Corrupt businessmen and politicians- Check
Ok, yes there is a lot more which we left out including the minister’s secretary wearing safari suit (Check).
Directors tend to repeat themselves, happens all the time man.
We understand that people can run out of ideas and would very much recycle existing works; marketing has a fancy name for this called “re-purposed content”.
The beauty of such content is in making it feel like a whole new experience, in 2.0 the opposite happens and the regular stream of Shankar references also do not help.
The film reaches fantastical levels of unconvincing-ness when Akshay Kumar turns up as prosthetic Pakshirajan or bird-man who somehow has summoned the dead spirits of sparrows to take away cell phones from humans. He believes that humans+cell phones have caused the caused the sparrow deaths and they must be punished. He also believes in wearing a sweater in Thirukazhukundram (70 Km from Chennai).
Dr. Vaseegaran on the other hand believes no man is match for bird-man and summons up Chitti ( The robot from Endhiran). Yep, that’s it; very simple.
Shankar and his team of writers (including Jeyamohan who is writing the Mahabharata in modern form) have gone to the Keep It Simple School of Screenwriting.
If there is a problem, then there is an immediate solution and the protagonist knows what it really and exactly is and hence there is no real tension. Even when a gigantic metallic bird threatens to destroy the city.
Let alone the story, 2.0 refuses to engage in complexities in its science too; everything is reduced to positive and negative. This reductive science approach undertaken to cater to the breadth of the audience ends up hurting the film which after a while feels like a hollow assemblage of well rendered visual effects.
Immediate wow-factor not withstanding 2.0 also overstays its welcome, so eager it is to show us this spectacle that it forgets that the film is pretty much over before the titular 2.0 appears.
2.0 is again Rajnikanth who in the absence of good writing and an effective BGM makes those scenes work with ‘that’ trademark laugh and quips, but by this time it is difficult for humans to really feel connected for the final forty minute action display.
Very early on in the film, an engineering student falls ‘immediately’ in love over the immaculate beauty that is Nila (Amy Jackson) only to fall immediately out of love when he comes to know that Nila is in fact a humanoid robot.
Good to look at, but nothing much beyond that.
Oh wait, that’s the movie too.
The Lowly Laureate 