Christian Fletcher: Remember Hiroshima?
Shingen Narahashi: Remember Pearl Harbour?
Shingen Narahashi: Remember Pearl Harbour?
As two of the 10 avtars – Kamal Haasan, mightily affected as an American mercenary and Kamal Haasan, with rehearsed gravitas as a Japanese martial art ace – exchange this during the climactic fight in Dasavatharam, it’s hard to miss the point. Haasan is playing to the gallery. He wants you to take note. Fair trade.
But what, truly, tanks Dasavatharam is not the corniness of it all. It’s not the supremely shoddy graphic-work. It’s not Michael Westmore’s laboured, prosthetic faces. No, not even The Bullet That Cures The Cancer. This super-hyped return of the chameleon actor-star is done in by its ambition.
But what, truly, tanks Dasavatharam is not the corniness of it all. It’s not the supremely shoddy graphic-work. It’s not Michael Westmore’s laboured, prosthetic faces. No, not even The Bullet That Cures The Cancer. This super-hyped return of the chameleon actor-star is done in by its ambition.
Dasavatharam has an engaging premise that makes for a rollicking road movie. White hitman follows Indian scientist who flees with a deadly virus, in a cross-continent trail. The thread, though, gets thinned out as the actor-writer pursues the blurred and the superfluous, with an apparent nod to the Chaos Theory. In the process, Dasavatharam gets populated with the rest of the avtars, spun in for the all-lead-to-one effect.
RAW sleuth Balram Naidu – perhaps Haasan’s best turn here – has terrific possibilities as a stand-alone protagonist. There are also moments that carry the stamp of a writer who hasn't quite lost it yet. These are still parts of an underwhelming whole. Some of the avtars look straight out of a badly done school pantomime, ill-propped and cramped for movement. The CGI boys go berserk with their toys, belting out practically anything – from butterfly wing-flaps to the Tsunami – with a certain B-movie tardiness that you don't attach to the costliest (check) film made in the country. And Himesh Reshammiya has, probably, scored his last for a film down south.
RAW sleuth Balram Naidu – perhaps Haasan’s best turn here – has terrific possibilities as a stand-alone protagonist. There are also moments that carry the stamp of a writer who hasn't quite lost it yet. These are still parts of an underwhelming whole. Some of the avtars look straight out of a badly done school pantomime, ill-propped and cramped for movement. The CGI boys go berserk with their toys, belting out practically anything – from butterfly wing-flaps to the Tsunami – with a certain B-movie tardiness that you don't attach to the costliest (check) film made in the country. And Himesh Reshammiya has, probably, scored his last for a film down south.
But as always with a Kamal Haasan film, the fun is on the ringside. While many fans have been left shocked at this assault, the more trusted ones are out there, diligently decoding the method behind this madness. Last heard, the jury is still out on if Vincent Poovarahan – an interestingly etched Dalit leader – is a throwback to the well, varaha avtar. And if the kurma avtar has a parallel in the vaishnavite priest Rangaraja Nambi, who's left bound to his deity in the depths of the ocean. Loaded questions, really. But after an outrageously indulgent lead-man trip, do you care enough to dig deep?
