RAJINIKANTH FILM GETS ITS WIRES CROSSED
Despite a stellar cast, including Akshay Kumar, ‘2.0’ is all shine and no soul
Southern superstar Rajinikanth is out to save the civilians of Chennai in his latest sci-fi spectacle,
2.0, directed by S Shankar. But if anybody had to be saved, it’s the hapless viewers in the cinema hall who invested their time and money hoping for a riveting face-off in a fantasy adventure studded with robots and beastly birds.
2.0 is a gigantic let down on that front.
The film revolves around a disillusioned ornithologist (a bird expert) Pakshi Rajan (Akshay Kumar) who goes rogue and unleashes a terrible technological warfare against the civilians of Chennai. The activist screams himself hoarse about how birds are falling prey to radiation from the towers erected by unscrupulous mobile network providers. No one listens to his earnest pleas against capitalism or ecological imbalance.
Pakshi Rajan turns monstrously sinister after turning into a beastly bird with superpowers who goes about destroying swathes of people with an unhealthy dependence on their mobile phones.
His modus operandi is simple: snatch away their mobile phones and crush their bones while he’s at it. Kumar, who takes his plunge as a villain with a purpose in South Indian cinema with 2.0, makes his entry only nearing intermission.
Until then, the first half is all about how an unidentified ungodly creature declares war against mobile phones and how Dr Vaseegaran (Rajinikanth) gears up to save the day with the help of his humanoid creation Chitti. He has a buxom robotic assistant Nila (Amy Jackson) whose job is to make Dr Vaseegaran’s life simpler.
Jackson looks fantastically fetching, but doesn’t have much to do. The heavy-lifting is done by ‘Superstar Rajini’ who plays the humane scientist and his robotic alter-ego Chitti.
If you are a diehard fan of this matinee idol, you are likely to be seduced by his oft-seen onscreen antics like a robot flipping a cigarette and donning sun glasses in his inimitable style. But if you are greedy to see him in a different never-seenbefore avatar, you will be sorely disappointed. Precious minutes in the first half are wasted in creating a stunning spectacle of carnage of mobile phones and civilians. While it’s interesting at first, it gets tedious after the same point is bludgeoned into