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While the trailer of 2.0 aka Endhiran / Robot 2 had
moments of significant interest, I was not very hopeful of the end
product. Shankar's last movie was crap. And let's face it, 'Superstar'
Rajini isn't getting any younger. Even with the layers of pancake, and
rather obvious wigs and fake goatees he looks like someone's grandpa at a
fancy dress party - a simple shot showing his character slapping water
on the face has to be haphazardly edited because it would be a make-up
disaster. The pairing with Akshay Kumar (who ironically plays a
geriatric nagging crank bird-lover) is a purely commercial exercise to
draw in the Hindi audiences as well to diffuse the risk of this
stratospheric budget movie. The reviews, including from my favorite critic Baradwaj Rangan were middling as well,
suggesting that everything between the action and VFX is immensely
boring and turgid.
Well, the reviews are right about the in-between stuff being dull filler, but what they don't tell you is that, apart from a testing flashback sequence in which the baddie Akshay Kumar character spells out his bird-brained motivation, there is very little footage that is not badass action or spectacular VFX. Again technically, the graphicsdon't have the same level of pixel perfect polish as your MCU or Star Wars movies, but they're a hell lot better than Bahuballyhoo, and Shankar's imagination as a visual director remains unparalleled. The action and VFX scenes in this movie are way more exciting than most stuff I've seen in Hollywood movies in recent years. In terms of inspiration this movie is like Terminator meets Transformers meets Avengers/JL, and without the bloat of those movies. While Rajinikant is ho-hum in his nice guy parts, he seems to find a special glee in playing Evil Chitti (and another character who I shall not spoil here), since it probably comes as such a relief to the goody-goody characters he has been restricted to play once he became a big star. And he gets to mouth several hilarious quips (at least some of the puns and allusions work only for Tamil movie goers, don't know how they are substituted in the Hindi version). This movie is in overall feel like Pacific Rim - really dumb but really awesome.
I saw it in Tamil 2D at the local screen with about a dozen people total in the auditorium, let me see if I can catch the 3D version as well.
Well, the reviews are right about the in-between stuff being dull filler, but what they don't tell you is that, apart from a testing flashback sequence in which the baddie Akshay Kumar character spells out his bird-brained motivation, there is very little footage that is not badass action or spectacular VFX. Again technically, the graphicsdon't have the same level of pixel perfect polish as your MCU or Star Wars movies, but they're a hell lot better than Bahuballyhoo, and Shankar's imagination as a visual director remains unparalleled. The action and VFX scenes in this movie are way more exciting than most stuff I've seen in Hollywood movies in recent years. In terms of inspiration this movie is like Terminator meets Transformers meets Avengers/JL, and without the bloat of those movies. While Rajinikant is ho-hum in his nice guy parts, he seems to find a special glee in playing Evil Chitti (and another character who I shall not spoil here), since it probably comes as such a relief to the goody-goody characters he has been restricted to play once he became a big star. And he gets to mouth several hilarious quips (at least some of the puns and allusions work only for Tamil movie goers, don't know how they are substituted in the Hindi version). This movie is in overall feel like Pacific Rim - really dumb but really awesome.
I saw it in Tamil 2D at the local screen with about a dozen people total in the auditorium, let me see if I can catch the 3D version as well.
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