Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
The title intro for the 2024 movie “Indian 2” rolls in 20 minutes into the runtime, by which time I was in near-tears because there were over 2 hours to go, and it was already boring, with overtly theatrical dramatizations of a bunch of different corruption scandals that a team of YouTubers highlight on their channel. I actually saw the 1996 “Indian” on Netflix a few days ago, for the second time after several years, mostly for the amazing songs, but even now, the 1996 version doesn’t feel as dated as the new one.
Directed by S. Shankar, “Indian 2” starts off by introducing Siddharth as Chitra Varadarajan, a young man who runs a media-style YouTube channel called “Barking Dogs.” Chitra and his friends satirize corruption cases to raise awareness and revive R. K. Laxman’s iconic cartoon character “The Common Man” in their videos. However, despite a substantial following and “likes,” the team realizes they aren’t able to make any real difference against a rotting system, so they decide to run a campaign to bring back Veerasekaran Senapathy (Kamal Haasan), an army veteran known for his crusade against corruption.
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What follows is a tiring, glorified, overdone movie that plays out like a long lecture in the form of a stage play made by college students who’ve run into a lot of funds. Visually, a lot of the settings and cinematography in “Indian 2” are lavish and aesthetic, but rarely in sync with the screechy script. For example, we get back-to-back tragic stories of how common citizens are forced to their deaths at the beginning, and all the characters loudly gasp in shock each time, almost like pageant contestants who’ve practiced their gasps one too many times. It was especially hilarious to see Siddharth forcibly feigning surprise in such scenes, knowing how he is a great actor otherwise. Well, subtlety is simply not an ingredient in “Indian 2.”
The makeup team does such a slipshod job with Kamal Haasan’s look that he almost looks like an aged Gulshan Grover, who plays one of the many villains in “Indian 2.” And once I saw the similarity, it further ruined the rest of the long-drawn film for me. Given the dated nature of the script, instead of setting the sequel in the 2020s, the creators should’ve probably set “Indian 2” just a few years after the timeline of the first one, so there would’ve been no reason to cake up Kamal Haasan in layers of prosthetics.
While some of the background music in “Indian 2” is gritty, the songs come nowhere close to the charm of the older tracks. In fact, the first song to play in the film feels like an affront to the chart-busting album of the original “Indian,” which was composed by AR Rahman. If you haven’t seen the first film, maybe watch that instead of this snooze-fest. It’s hard to believe that there’s actually going to be a part two to this sequel – Indian 3 is expected to come out in 2025. Hopefully, they’ll rope in writers who are more in touch with the present.
Both “Indian” and “Indian 2” are on Netflix.
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