Dasavatharam

Back to the 21st century, in Philadelphia, Govind is a biotechnologist, specialized in virology. He works in a private company which expertises in biological weapons. Govind and his colleagues have just invented a deadly airborne virus which attracts some bad elements to the company for a lucrative deal with some high authorities. Kamal finds about it just in time and takes away the capsule in which the virus is stored and fleds. The bad elements employ Christian Fletcher (Kamal 4), a former CIA agent to retrieve the capsule from Govind. Then begins the cat-and-mouse game, which brings all the players to Tamil Nadu. The other six characters of Kamal intersect this deadly game, which proceeds with a lot of blood spills before culminating in a gargantuan climax involving Tsunami.

The first half of the movie has one of the most fast-paced screenplays in Tamil films. Too many things happen so quickly that even the songs dont have the usual decelerating effect. The characters are well-etched and the story takes us through 12th century Chidambaram, modern Philadelphia and Washington DC, Japan and India. The second half drags in comparison to that and reduces the slickness of the movie. Asin's character is a huge letdown since she is downright irritating after the melodious and sweet 'Mukunda' song. She is the weaklink in the movie, and in the end, one cant but feel that her character could be done away with. The 'romance' between Kamal and Asin is the worst I have seen in any Kamal movies.

The role of Rangarajan Nambi is the most intense among all, though Balram Naidu role as the RAW officer wins the best of 10 avtars. He is so hilarious, with some very funny lines and body language. Fletcher comes next best, whereas the 'lighthouse' Khalifa is the least impressive, followed by the Japanese guy. Also, on the Avtar Singh show, the big question is, how come a Punjabi singer gets such a rousing reception and crowd in Chennai? Amazing how Kamal could appear very tall and quite short (the 'paatti' role). After the initial excitement of seeing Kamal in different roles fades away, we get engrossed in the proceedings of the movie, treating as though the various roles are played by different actors.The movie is based on Chaos theory, which states that each of the incidents  compliments others.

Dasavathaaram, is a watchable movie, just because of Kamal's hardwork. When we make a film based on scientific theories, you must make the movie sensible and logical. I was shocked to see a bullet curing cancer in the throat of the pop singer Avtar sing, who was suggested a surgery! And wow he can sing now better! K.S. Ravikumar is not raising upto the standards and proving that he can only direct pukka local tamil comedies like Pammal K Sambandham and Thenali which was almost logicless and contentless. Music is mediocre. Sometimes, it seems like he stuffed unnecessary charecters. Mallika is wasted. I saw Bush asking "What is NaCl?" Is he a buffoon enough to forget his second standard lessons? Oh boy!

Dasavathaaram would have been a disaster, but Kamal's superb perfomances and the number games save it. Go for Dasavathaaram, it's really watchable, of course, better than Rajni movies! Never a dull moment - a fine flick.