Billa 2 starts with Thala mouthing the famous dialogue about carving his
own life every day, every minute and every second... One should have
got the strong hint for what is to follow... the feeling one may get
from watching Billa 2 is similar to staring at the seconds hand of your
clock for 2 hours straight.
Tremendous potential of Billa 2
The Billa-2 teaser has made every viewer curious as to know who Billa
was? Was he good, moral, strong? The only thing that we knew going in is
that David Billa was a self-made man. Billa 2 is the first ever prequel
in Tamil Cinema. The good thing about prequels is that they are not
bound by the 'image'. The character does not have to be invincible. The
character can be weak, vulnerable or anything the director wants him to
be, giving the directors a lot of creative space for showing the
transformation. Did Billa 2 deliver on this promise?
Direction, Story, Script, Screenplay, Characterization
Chakri Toleti's story travels along expected lines, narrated linearly
without much twist and turns. Screenplay fails to engage the audience.
Characterization is extremely weak for all the characters in the movie.
After spending 2 hours in the theatre, one would not get even an ounce
of insight into David Billa's character. The movie is fraught with poor
characterization barring Ilavarasu. Era Murugan's dialgoues show few
sparks and appear forced.
Chakri struggles to carry the burden of massive expectations originating
from successful Billa 2 franchise and Ajith fans expecting a fitting
follow-up to Mankatha. The lack of experience shows in the bookish
execution throughout the movie. The movie has too many redundant scenes
and unwanted shots. For e.g., the famous "self made man" dialogue is
repeated thrice in the movie. Ajith ends up in a
blood-stained-white-shirt after almost every shoot-out scenes against a
bunch of henchmen.
The action sequences lack motive; emotional connect is extremely low.
The interval-block lacks impact when Ajith challenges the Villain and
decides to break-free. Many scenes make you question the logics. e.g.,
why Parvathy is tied up in an open grassland by enemies guarded by dozen
guys who were watching her at sniper shot range. Also, Ajith and two
other accomplices enter the enemy's major Arm's factory and
single-handedly shoot down a large number of machine gun carrying men.
All happening when Ajith is perched up on a crane-carrying disc while
exposing himself as an open target with bullets sprayed from machine gun
pumping men all around him.
One thing that the director should be credited for is his sincerity in
trying to make a film with no forced comedies or typical commercial
sentiments. The best scene in the entire movie is when David Billa kills
the local drug peddler who refuses to pay money.
Casting and Acting
It is not clear why the Director decided to cast too many unfamiliar
faces and a slew of inexperienced actors in key roles. This has resulted
in having an alien feeling throughout. Parvathy and Bruna appear in
short roles wearing shorter clothes. The total number of dialogues
spoken by many of the key characters can be written in an A4 sheet each.
Also, the key actors deliver the dialogues flatly with no expression.
Manoj K Jayan, Ilavarasu, Sriman, Rahman are few of the familiar faces
seen before in Tamil movies. Sriman is shown around half a dozen times
like a junior artist nodding the head in the background and finally gets
to mouth one dialogue in a scene and in the next scene, he is curled up
and shot dead by Billa in the trunk of a car. Ilavarasu is the only
person who stands out in otherwise nondescript characterization.
Technical value
At a superficial level, Billa 2 may appear to be a slickly made
technically savvy movie. The truth of the matter is that the lack of
ability to engage the audience is partly because of the technical
department failing to do their tasks well. RD rajasekhar's
cinematography is good. Suresh Urs' editing is a let-down. Many scenes
seem to have too much unwanted lag and lead frames before going for the
cuts. It is not sure whether the director explicitly wanted it that way.
The art direction in the refugee camp looks artificial. Most of the
scenes happen in a beach resort type of environment or in godforsaken
Georgia. There is not even a single scene that shows Billa in a location
with common people around or a relate-able location.
Song and Music
Yuvan has worked really hard to move the story forward. However, the
song picturization and placements further drag the movie. When the movie
is moving at turtle speed in the second half, the director decides to
introduce the slow song "Idhayam" picturized in ultra-slow motion with
Parvathy Omnakuttan running endlessly in a beach. People who watch the
movie after the first day may not get to see this song. This song is a
strong candidate for deletion by resident editors at local theatres.
There is a newly inserted song in foreign language which sounds good for
first listen.
Ajith
Ajith has taken risks in the final helicopter stunt sequence. Most of
the dialogues are delivered by Ajith in monotonous style with no
inflections. Ajith works hard to look cool by showing no emotions in
most of the scenes. Despite all the hype surrounding the movie, it is
unfortunate that even Ajith couldn't salvage the movie.
Verdict : Billa 2 will test your patience!
