Review of Vishwaroopam

Release date - 1'st Feb  2013

One Line which describes the film-
(a line from the film's song) – "Shehron main hinsa ko dekh jangal bhi hairan hai " 


Best  Dialogue –

"Hum Allah ke liye khoon bahate hain aur yeh petrol ke liye."

Genre - Action /Thriller 


Story - Kamal Haasan , Atul Tiwari

Music – Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy

Producer -  Chandra Haasan , Kamal Haasan

Direction - Kamal Haasan 

Cast - Kamal Haasan , Pooja Kumar , Andrea Jeremiah , Rahul Bose , Jaideep Ahlawat

Budget – 100 crores

Kamal Hassan , a spy disguises himself as a jihadi fighting the NATO forces in a Afghanistan and later as a Kathak dance teacher . He has to stop Afghani Al-Qaeda jihadi Omar (Rahul Bose) and Salim (Jaideep Ahlawat , earlier appeared as Shahid Khan in Gangs of Wasseypur ) who plan to attack New York  with a “Cesium-bomb”. 

The film starts at a slow speed. After 40 minutes comes a fast action sequence which makes us sit upright in our seats .

There are some points which make the film an intelligent work of art and a must watch

1. We are shown how rigid the jihadis are in their beliefs ,they don't mind punishing their young boys if they find them listening to music , how they want their women to be covered from head to toe .

2.  The Afghanistan set made in Chennai  with the mud houses , caves ,dusty streets was just perfect .  

 Even the minutest details seemed real ,be it the houses or the costumes or the mannerisms of women or even the weapons and the way they were used .

3. The scenes portraying the cruelty that the Taliban were doing in the name of Islam (like killing and hanging people), the scene where a young boy is enjoying on a swing just before he becomes a suicide bomber touch your heart.

4. We are shown how every family member of the jihadi are dragged into terrorism even if they want to choose a different life style . Omar's innocent 5 year old son says that he wants to become a doctor but in  the next scene we find Omar blind folding him and questioning him about different guns and bullets.

Rahul Bose says in a scene " Bhai london main engineer ban na chahta hai aur engineer jihadi ban rahe hai Afghanistan main" 

5. There are scenes where we find Kamal Hassan helpless and in pain as  he knows that he can't protect the innocent people making his character very real ,unlike THE other super human spys in Agent Vinod and Ek Tha Tiger .

In a line despite it's slow speed and a non happening climax Vishwaroopam has some  spell binding moments . 

Good One time watch .

Rank-  2  (Out of the 10 films I have seen in 2013 )