Dasavatharam Review

Dasavatharam, after seeing the movie my first reaction was : "racy". The screenplay of the movie kept the audience always involved.  I see the movie in two parts: one, the 12th century portion spanning for about 15 minutes and the second - the actual movie, lasting for the remaining minutes. There was never a scene in the second part of the movie which I found was redundant. Even the two songs in this part were carefully placed and properly intertwined with the storyline.  Regarding the first part, I fail to see its link with the remaining portion of the movie. It looks as if Kamal Hassan, the story writer, wanted the audience to know that there existed violent enmity between Saivites and Vaishnavites before the arrival of the foreign rulers just as the animosity existing between religions in the modern days. The only trace of a link of the first part with the second I could find was that the idol to which Kamal Hassan was tied and thrown into the sea in the 12th century would reappear in the final scene with actually no real significance - Kamal and Asin would stand beside it and propose!

As it has been said in Sify, of the 10 roles, some of them did not have substantial part in the movie.  I may sound contradictory here, I feel the movie had no redundant scenes but the 10 roles of Kamal were not actually justified. Some of them were roles that are typically done by character artistes. But Kamal's acting, makeup, dialogue delivery in each of these roles were impeccable, especially, the dialogue delivery of Bhuvaragan in his introductory scene.

There are some of the roles which stays in my mind even after a good night's sleep: The faces of American President Bush, the ex-CIA turned terrorist, Dalit activist Bhuvaragan.

I felt the songs were a let down prior to the movie, but now I feel it is not all that bad as there are only three songs and nicely compensated by the intertwined story in almost all of them.

The climax scene with Tsunami was a visual treat.  I liked the way the screenplay linked the story to a real-life incident.  It did make the entire story appear (to an extent) like a real one, that could have really happened. I was reminded of Irving Wallace's Seventh secret.

I expected the movie to be more on the lines of Hey Ram (which to me is the best Indian film I have seen) but it turned out to be a fast action movie where the Ulaganayagan did not disappoint his fans or any movie-goer.  All in all, I was happy at the end of the movie with a feeling of well-spent 200 rupees and (more or less) my expectations satisfied.