Viswaroop (dir: Kamal Haasan, story: Kamal Haasan, screenplay: Kamal Haasan, music: Shankar Ehsaan Loy, cinematography: Sanu Varghese)
Note: Because of the nonsense in TN, I was forced to watch the hindi version.
Viswaroop is inspired by the hollywood spy thriller genre and Kamal deserves lot of credit for recreating that type of movie for what is essentially a regional market. Viswanath alias Wizam (Kamal) is a secret service agent who lives in New York with his wife Nirupama who works as a Nuclear oncologist. Wizam and his fellow agents are about to uncover a secret plan by a group of terrorists to attack New York, when matters are precipitated by the terrorists accidentally capturing Viswa and Nirupama. How Viswa morphs into Wizam and whether they foil the plot forms the rest of the movie, along with long flashbacks of Wizam and Omar, the leader of the terrorists.
First of all, this movie seems to be behind times by 7-8 years. I read that Kamal has been living with this story for this period and had to wait this long for the economics to work out. This is a shame. Because fact has proven to be stranger than fiction as far as international terrorism is concerned. Hopefully, the heydays of terrorism are behind us with the death of OBL. It cannot be a co incidence that Al Qaeda affiliated fighters are trying desperately to establish a beachhead in sub-Saharan Africa. They are on the run, make no mistake. So it is difficult to believe that the kind of plot shown in the movie can come so close to fruition, in the current scenario. Hence the movie seems behind times. That apart, the science of the plot reeks of plausibility and hats off to the writer for that.
The other issue is that in the Afghanistan portion of the movie, there is an attempt to portray Wizam as a empathising human. The standard trope in spy genre is to portray the spy as a cynical man (who does the right thing at the end). Kamal may have genuinely wanted to move away from this but I can't help thinking that this is a case of Kamal the actor triumphing over the instincts of Kamal the writer. I think the audience is mature enough (and well versed in rights and wrongs of terrorism in Afghanistan) to make their won judgement. We don't need Kamal doing his typical punnagai mannan type facial contortions to spoon feed us the obvious.
I realise that this is an incomplete movie. There is a second part (60-70% already shot?) which will hopefully cover some of the gaps in the first movie. For example, what is a RAW agent doing in New York when his own country is under attack back home? I know that RAW is into external espionage but surely their work has to contribute to combating terrorism in India? From the teaser at the end it looks like that's what the second movie will tackle. But even if it is incomplete, since it has been released as stand alone movie, it has to be judged so.
So my biggest quibble with the movie is that by the end the tension doesn't build up and the ending is quite tame. This is a big weakness when the movie is purported to be in the spy thriller genre. We have spies all over but very little thrill by the end.
Still, I will say kudos to Kamal for the vision and execution, The first 30 minutes are absolutely spell binding. The scene in the end where Wizam conceals the gun in his hand as he walks is just a jaw dropping moment for me. Such a small detail and done with such precision. And well done for relegating songs to the background except for the beautiful kathak number.
What of the controversies? I don't know. It is informative that the movie faced protests only in TN and din't elicit a peep in other places such as Mumbai. It is possible that the way the terrorists are depicted may have caused offence but then when so many english movies are made on such subjects why protest against a Tamil movie alone? Because it is an easy target? Also isn't Wizam also from the same religion?
My bigger issue with all such incidents is that such occurrences are possible only when the concerned government refuses to enforce the rule of law. Whether it is a protest against an art form or a protest against women going to pubs, if the government of the day is firm such intolerance can be nipped in the bud. It is sad that tools of democracy are used to facilitate mobocracy.
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