In the product details, I wanted to mark the Movie Genre as "Comedy", later I decided to leave it to the discretion of the the viewers.
Kamal movies always create great expectations among the movie lovers and he has managed to deliver some great movies in the past. But his last 2 movies, Vettaiyadu Vilayadu and Dasavatharam are big disappointments for me.
The movie opens with a flashback, of a historical event took place in the 12th Century, capturing on screen the clash between the Shaivaites and the Vaishnavites. The Shaivaite king plans to destroy Vaishanvism, orders to remove all the idols of Vishnu from the temples. Rangaraja Nambi, a hardcore Vaishnavite, (Kamal) tries to stop the king from removing the idol of Vishu, being captured by the soldiers and tied to the large idol of Vishnu, and drowned in the Sea. This opening 10 minutes (which I feel has no relevance in the story) of the movie really grips the audience and leave them with a great expectation of what is going to come.
From, there the story, goes to (20th Dec, 04), US, where Govind (Kamal), a scientist, working for a project funded by the US government, engaged in developing weapons for biological warfare, manages to create a deadly virus, which when exposed could kill millions of people. They store this virus in a vial in the cold storage of the lab. This virus can only be destroyed by Nacl (Sodium choloride).
Govind then realises the severity of his invention, tries to convince his superiors and the US president Bush(also played by Kamal) to abort this experiment, which can bring upon a huge calamity to the human race. In the meantime, a senior official in the team tries to sell the deadly virus to a terrorist group. Govind, who’s already suspicious about this official, quickly understands the plan and runs away with the Vial.
The gang employs Christian Fletcher (Kamal), an exCIA, now a hitman, to recover the vial from Govind. Govind tries to escape with the vial and try to take the help of FBI and bring the evil intentions of the group to light. But he was made to flee the country in a Cargo flight, lands up in India. In the cargo flight, he stores the vial in a cold storage. When the cargo lands in India, Govind was spotted and arrested and taken for investigation by a CBI officer (Kamal again).
The vial from the cargo, travels thro Various places through various characters, finally ends up inside a small idol of Vishnu by accident. In the meantime, Fletcher also comes to India with Jasmin (Mallika Sherawath), in search of the vial.Govind (trying to save the vial)and Andal (Asin, trying the recover idol of her worship), goes through lot of twists and turns before finally achieving their mission.
The chase begins on the 20th of dec in the US and lead to the climax scene on the 26th of December 2004 (the day of the asian Tsunami) in the coastal area of Tamilnadu
And in the climax of the movie, which takes place on a seashore where the 12th century idol was drowned, Fletcher, who captures the idol and the vial, is stopped by Govind, Andal and Shinghen Narahasi (Kamal), is on the verge of being killed by Shinghen Narahasi. Fletcher decides to commit suicide, breaks the vial and lets the virus out. The virus quickly begins to multiply and a disaster was waiting to happen and now there’s no way of stopping it. At that moment the sea suddenly rises and a huge Tsunami wave hits the coast drowning thousands of people and also Fletcher and the infected vial on its way.
The main characters like Govind, Andal etc survives the Tsunami. The NaCl content in the sea waters deactivates the virus and saves the life of millions. The idol drowned in the 12th Century washed to shores by the Tsunami.
Andal argues that God saved the lives of millions from the deadly virus, by causing Tsunami, Govind questions why "thousands of innocents were killed" if the god is a protector? And their pro/anti god conversation continues, really without any conclusion on that topic....neither accepting the others view.
As such the plot and the sequence of events are good, but the way its being filmed is not very convincing. The special effects and graphics look very primitive. Before the release of the movie, the biggest talking point was the 10 characters performed by Kamal. So it has created a great expectation in me and naturally for the others too. But other than the 3 characters such as Rangarajan Nambi, Govind and CBI officer Naidu, the rest are a big flop.
The Fletchers character and kamal as George Bush are the biggest joke of this century. Some characters of kamal, like Avtar Sing, Kalif Ullah really dont have any relevance and are simply forced upon the script for the count. I really felt like watching a fancy dress competition and thats what made me to give such a title for this review. Asin’s character is the biggest irritation of the movie.
Kamal actually has tried to do toooooooo many things in this movie and miserably failed in many of them. He’s clearly targetting the oscars, so he wants to make a movie of the class of hollywood and at the same time wants to please the masses also, which I feel is two different poles.
Kamal is one of the very few who goes a long way to make good movies, He is a genius, who posses multiple talents. He has already proved his skills in the past through some class movies like Mahanadhi, Anbe Sivam, Micheal Madan Kamarajan etc, but here in this movie he has faltered basically bcos he wanted to "show off" and dominate the entire script.
Overall, I was really irritated with the graphics, special effects and the make up. The dialogues have been far inferior to his standards. There were several logical flaws and lot of unwanted characters. Kamal has played a major part in making this movie an "Ordinary movie" which could have been a lot better one.