[Movie Review] Vishwaroop: Kamal Haasan’s Melody!

Cast: Kamal Haasan, Pooja Kumar, Andrea Jeremiah
Director: Kamal Haasan
Genre: Comedy, Action

It starts with Kamal Haasan teaching Kathak to his pupils, middles with Kamal Haasan in Afghanistan along with a group of Mujahedeen and ends with Kamal Haasan saving the whole of New York City. This is a platform to show how dynamic a person can be, for Kamal Haasan is the actor, writer and director of the mega budgeted Vishwaroop and trust me, he is there in every frame of this movie; read again, every frame!

At one second he is down on the ground, begging his captors to set him free and the very  next second, he is making pulp out of their brains, beating them like there is no tomorrow. That is how Vishwanathan (Kamal Hassan) is, indestructible yet polite, humorous yet intense. 

On the other hand, Dr Nirupama (Pooja Kumar), a nuclear oncologist weds Vishwanathan for the sake of green card and quickly assumes that things are off the charts with her husband and thus, hires a personal detective to investigate him. What leads, is an inconsistent narrative jumping from flashbacks to present in an unconventional manner.

Terrorism has been tackled in countless Bollywood affairs before, but it is the context of Vishwaroop that makes it stand out in this horde. The execution, though erratic, is unflinching and compromises not a single shred of substance. Though, in the latter half of the movie, it loses the brainpowers and succumbs to gaping plot holes for the sake of delivering unabashed action sequences. But it is one thing that a thriller should always be, popcorn crackling entertainment.

And on top of that, the climax is disastrous. Seriously, A Faraday shield? What was all the setup for? To snatch a hurried climax of a movie that well exceeds its time frame with meaningless conversations and unnecessary characters speaking languages that one can’t understand. When being translated, you are already sighing for not being able to comprehend it in the first place.

As one realizes the countless times Haasan’s name been used in this review, one must realize that if not for Haasan, this movie would have been lost in the theatres without anybody knowing about it.  He gives an electrifying performance and carries the movie single handedly while the characters around him act like buffoons and behave like dumb retards on a runaway from an asylum.

What is unintentionally sidesplitting is the appearance of the villain, Omar (Rahul Bose). It is indeed a pity to see such a capable actor being reduced to nothing due to hysterical makeup and a terrible grin; wait, this grin was in the scripts, right? Actually, the problem is that the expressions never change; no, not even for a minute!

To sum the case; leave aside the morality take, leave aside the religious propaganda and leave aside the crude remarks splashed on the movie, this is semi-solid entertainment. It may get dumb by the end, but blah, who cares!

(first published in www.udaipurtimes.com)