I felt embarrassed for being in a self proclaimed league of those eagerly waiting for Kamal Hassan's new movie, Dasavatharam. In his new Avathar, Kamal painfully tries to fit into 10 characters who live (extra)ordinary life in seemingly unconnected spheres. In some strange twist of fate, their lives get mingled. This will feel like another Amores Peros or Crash or Syriana or Babel or many other hyperlinked films increasingly dotting the realms of World cinema. But for the normal, formula driven Indian audience it is an entirely new experience; but I suspect whether the bang was too much for them. I say this because, the theaters didn't portray that enthusiasm which a big budget movie ought to highlight, the reason might be that the target audience was too intelligent a target for this particular style of narration. However this multi-threaded approach is quite new to the Indian commercial film diaspora and should be considered a treat for the avid viewer, sans its pathetic special effects and mediocre make-up. Film makers these days, are trying to blow up a fortune taking films. I just can't figure out where the proclaimed 80 crores have been spent since the special effects don't create the magic effect and the makeup makes the characters plastic. In fact if Kamal's objective was to give a message rather than immaculate himself with 10 roles, he could have done his job significantly better with lesser roles and much lesser crores.
Anyhow, the film moves something like this. Rewind to 12th century and here we have a temple priest how sacrifices his life because he was not willing to betray his belief to his deity. Kamal excels in this role. The king (Napoleon plays the role of the villain perfectly) gives command and the priest is mercilessly thrown into the depths of the ocean tied to the deity and perishes there. Fast forward to December, 2004, few days before the Indian Ocean tsunami. A scientist (played by Kamal. No makeup and wonderful role), who is also the protagonist, at some biological facility in the US develops a weapons grade microbe. There is an American ex-CIA villain (again played by Kamal to perfection, barring the overdone makeup) who wants to lay his hands upon the new weapon (somehow he didn't chose an "Al Qaeda" for this role). Then its a cat and mouse chase which then moves onto India, where we meet the police officer who is inclined in catching the villain at any cost (Kamal, once again, plays this role of a inept police officer to perfection). There is also the role of the environmental activist played astonishingly good(neglecting the overdone makeup). Kamal proves his mettle again with the role of a Sikh singer. Rest of the characters like President Bush, the Old lady, the extraordinarily tall guy and Kung foo master were not up to the mark and could have been better if avoided. Finally, when the villain is conquered, to make the hero's task difficult, he swallows the microbe and he is infected with it thereby increasing the chance of spreading the microbe. The only agent that can act again it is NaCl or salt. Then the famous Tsunami comes in and everything is cleansed.
Towards the end of the movie, the message what Kamal tries to give is God has a plan for the entire world and seemingly unrelated people and events may be very closely related. So whatever happens is the action of Gos and it happens for good.
Overall an average movie, with glitches like bad graphics, a weak narrative and poor makeup.
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