If one is asked to name some of the finest actors that our nation has produced, then one actor who will invariably feature in everyone's list will be Kamal Hassan. His body of work over the past 50 years is nothing short of extraordinary, due to which we invariably wait with bated breath whenever his movie hit the screens. With the legend having plunged into active politics with the launch of his political party 'Makkal Needhi Maiam', he has announced that he is retiring from movies. If he does keep his word, then there are just 3 of his movies left of which "Vishwaroopam 2" has hit the screens this weekend. The prequel was top notch & so naturally, the expectations are nigh high. So will it be yet another Kamal classic???



Wisam Ahmad Kashmiri (Kamal Hassan) & his team is on the way to London to hand over the body of their deceased colleague to the family. However, their stay over there turned out to be eventful as an assassination plot had been hatched for Wisam & Col Jagannath (Shekhar Kapur) by Iyer (Anant Mahadevan), an Indian bureaucrat turned rogue. Both of them managed to escape unscathed with the Colonel eliminating Iyer while Wisam finds out that all of this was masterminded by his old foe, Omar Qureshi (Rahul Bose). To make matters worse, Omar was planning a terrorist attack on London by making use of bombs that had sank off England's coast during WWII, which incidentally still happened to be active. It was now upto Wisam to defuse the situation but it wasnt going to be easy as he was up against a wounded enemy who was well versed with all his tactics.



Close to half a decade has passed since the release of "Vishwaroopam" which was without doubt a stylish espionage thriller that I felt was on par with Hollywood movies. Incidentally, a significant portion of the second part was shot along with the prequel itself but unforeseen issues such as financial crisis etc delayed the release. It is essentially a one man show as Kamal has taken care of all the major responsibilities & that could essentially might have been the reason why his script was just so uninspiring. The first half of the movie was spent predominantly on flashbacks & explanations as to what actually happened in the prequel which doesn't do anything apart from making the audience bored & confused. The actual terrorist plan seemed interesting but the manner in which it was executed was rather lame. Even the VFX, editing by Mahesh Narayan & the art direction which was fantastic in the prequel was pretty pathetic. However, it does have a couple of highlights such as Kamal's dialogues that touched upon various topics such as religion, geopolitics etc., Ghibran's music & the cinematography by Sanu Varghese and Shamdat Sainudeen.



As expected, Kamal was brilliant as the protagonist especially when he delivers the lines, though his action sequences weren't exactly great . Pooja Kumar was definitely far better in this while Andrea Jeremiah was fine in her part. Shekhar Kapur & Anant Mahadevan were ok while Rahul Bose was wasted.



Verdict: There is no doubt that the movie will have a fantastic initial owing to the praise worthy prequel & lack of competition at the box office. But for a person of Kamal's caliber, this movie is definitely a disappointment as the story lacked clarity & the flash backs that take up significant screen time didn't impart anything worthwhile to the overall impact. In short, it wont hurt to give it a miss!!!



Rating: 1.75/5



Regards...Ben