'Indian 2' movie review: Crusader on a Lost Cause

'Indian 2' falters because it gets the mix all wrong. It has some of the Shankar essentials, that could’ve set it up for solid masala entertainment but it takes a dated, preachy tone and addresses familiar questions with tedious calls for mob justice.

How late is too late for a film to have a sequel? What can be the considerations when the makers conceive a sequel 28 years after a successful first instalment? For starters, the sensibilities of the present its characters can grow into, perhaps?

Indian 2 doesn’t pause for character arcs or to propose a half-credible reason for Senapathy (Kamal Haasan), punisher extraordinaire, to return — why now, what has changed now? It also comes with a fundamental plot hole: if violence hasn’t fixed corruption in 28 years, why persist with it?

Writer-director Shankar sets the initial portions around a group of young activist-types who prod the corrupt with satire in viral videos (at this point, the screen shows like-share numbers spiking away, of course).

The group, led by Chitra Aravindan (Siddharth), needs Indian thatha back on crusade duty. A hashtag campaign they initiate gets the man – he is 106 now, according to fans who deciphered the character’s age in Indian (1996) — to fly in from Taipei. Shankar is reported to have asked us to look beyond age and other mortal inevitabilities, to consider Senapathy as a symbol of the common man’s outrage against a corrupt system.

The problem, though, is that none of this is even remotely symbolic. Indian 2 is as generic and overstated a film about power and class privilege can get. In its eagerness to drive home the obvious disparities, it pits victims of medical negligence and loan debts — some of them could’ve walked in from other Shankar films — against super-rich villains with a thing for bling.

Its drama is built around Senapathy’s new call to the people: don’t spare the corrupt, even if you have one at home. This is an interesting phase in the three-hour film, where the video warriors have to reconcile with their own immediate realities. But the writing slips again and with no new motive or method, and no worthy adversary, Senapathy becomes a caricature lost in a plot that has no point to make.

Kamal Haasan’s is less a performance than a strong, looming presence. Unlike in Indian, the make-up is strikingly intrusive and boxes the actor in.

Shankar’s vigilantes draw on their seething resentment against the establishment. Theirs are stories of the outlier, of the underdog striking back at the system, told with working-class sensibilities. With star power, slickly shot songs and big action set-pieces, they make for escapist entertainment, even when the messaging tends to get cursory.

Gentleman, Indian, and Anniyan are the truest to this template. Indian 2 falters because it gets the mix all wrong. It has some of the Shankar essentials, barring A R Rahman, that could’ve set it up for solid masala entertainment but it takes a dated, preachy tone and addresses familiar questions with tedious calls for mob justice.

Like its legendary lead actor under all those prosthetics, Indian 2 plods under its own weight till it gets to an overblown climax and closes with a semi-interesting teaser of another, yes, sequel. The ambition is just unreal.