Given the name Dasavatharam and that Kamal Hassan is playing 10 different roles, what would a sane movie lover expect? A mythological cum philosophical wormhole? A tale of 10 characters conveying a strong message? I thought of lots of possibilities but I must admit that I did not expect a mindless 'action cum thriller'. The first reason why I didn't like this magnum opus of Kamal Hassan is just because of the movie name. How can you name a film Dasavataram just because your lead role is playing 10 characters? Its like George Lucas naming Star Wars as CGI because of all the graphics used in the film !! There is nothing even close to something being an "avataram" in this film. The 10 characters played by Kamal are 10 different people all together. Those roles could have been played by 10 different people and the story would have been the same.
The second reason why I didn't like the film is because of the crappy story. The director did try to convey a message in this film but he made a 3 hour film to do that. The same can be done by filming this incident:
The canteen at the theater I went to accepts only cash. I wanted to eat samosa chat which costs $5. I have only $4 with me. So I turn back to see my friend Vijay in the line behind me. He wanted to eat a Chicken Roll which costs $4 and ... well ... he had a fiver with him. Now the Almighty God placed him behind me for a specific reason. All's fine in the end because I get to eat my samosa chat. :p
The director wanted to remind us that everything that happens happens for a specific reason. Sometimes we are able to understand it and sometimes not.
It starts off with a narrator who then absolutely fizzes out of the story. The point which annoyed me was if your story revolves around a real life incident like the Tsunami then why do you have have fictional events like George Bush coming to Chennai and giving a speech like a film star? What is the point of showing the date below in every scene when you end it with a totally fictional event which never ever happened? And when was the last time Presidents and Prime Ministers ever held a public meeting in a cricket stadium to "explain" anything? And how come Karunanidhi is on the dias as the Chief Minister in 2004?
The story is about 10 different people not related by any means. They happen to be at a particular place at a particular time effecting the journey of a biological weapon which comes to Chidambharam in India from US after a series of unfortunate incidents [sic]. Now because this film is shot like a fast paced action film it tests your nerve because it keeps digressing into the lives of the different different characters. As an audience I would be least interested in the characters personal lives when a bio weapon of mass destruction is living dangerously. So when the dalit Kamal is talking some serious stuff, I was thinking about the samosa chat that I had just eaten. I wanted to sleep through the Japanese flashback. The only offshoot I enjoyed watching was this beautiful shot song " mukundha mukundha".
I was completely at loss to justify the death of the dalit Kamal. I cringed whenever Sardarji Kamal came on the screen. I still can't believe that the bullet went through his throat removing the cancer but not damaging his vocal chord. Mithun da doing this scene in a B Grade flick in the 80' s itself was pathetic. But of all the people Kamal Hassan doing it in 2008 is really ___ ( I searched the web to see if any word can describe my feeling, but I failed ). I would have loved it if the sardarji died instead of the dalit one. The Sardarji deserved to die for singing a Himesh Reshamiya pop song while doing Bhangara steps on the stage.
Fletcher was one son of a gun whom you wished never existed. The story writer just put him in some places at his own will just to irritate us. His most unwanted appearance was during the last fight when he suddenly out of nowhere jumps from a boat to the scientist Kamal. And I thought Indian cinema stopped doing this kind of screenplay for good !!
The third reason why I didn't like this film is because of the technical ascepts. It was actually quite difficult. Nothing like this has been done before by Indian cinema. In some of the scenes 3-4 Kamal Hassans was there in the same frame. Now when you are shooting such a scene either you pump in money and get it done by experts or you make it simple. Instead you have the camera swrilling round and round in all the scenes and what we end up seeing on the screen looks pathetic. The graphics was a huge let down in the 12th century story. Scenes that could have been shot for real were replaced by poor graphics. Editing was really sloppy. In order to make it a fast paced action, they over did the editing part and the whole film looked amateurish because of that.
As usual, the comedy part saved the movie. The CBI officer had everyone in splits whenever he said something. But unfortunately some of Asin's jokes were straight from the PJ community in Orkut.
Now seriuosly, it was a really difficult film to make. No doubt about that. The director did a decent job even though he was hugely let down because of the story, screenplay and graphics. It must have been a nightmare for him to plan the shooting of the whole film. Kamal Hassan does deserve a pat on his back for continuing what he is best known for: experimenting. His body language for each of the characters were different. Though since I saw the telugu version, all I could hear was SP Balu's voice but still it was really impressive. Apart from that the film is a huge dissapointment.
