‘Kaalidas 2’ movie review: One good twist cannot save this tedious thriller

Not only is that the case here, but Kaalidas 2 also meanders and takes too much effort to piece together the jigsaw. Too many things are happening before we get to the conflict. Inspector Kaalidas (Bharath) goes solo in an attempt to save a married couple in Meyyur from goons, only to find them already hacked to death by the woman’s father. How does this tie to the larger plot? Even psychologically, this does very little to drive Kaalidas. Now, who is this young lawyer named Stephen (Ajay Karthi) who kidnaps a gangster from court and kills him? We are given only a hurried hint of a gang war between rival gangsters.

Soon, Stephen moves to a new apartment in Urapakkam, where he stalks Gokul (Anant Nag), his wife Sanju (Abarnathi), and their child Mithra. Everything changes on the night of the New Year celebrations, when Mithra, whom we last saw following Stephen’s pet dog, goes missing. Kaalidas is called to solve the case. All arrows soon point toward Stephen, who has a mysterious past, but do the cops have admissable evidence?

There’s a visible instability in the setup of the plot that never allows Kaalidas 2 to establish an atmosphere and set a tempo for itself. The writing sees a visible dip after Assistant Commissioner Vaishnavi (Bhavani Sre) takes over as the head of the investigation team. This is an IPS officer who, not only has the patience of a toddler, but also often throws tantrums like one, making you wonder if she really had any IPS training — she gets on your nerves from the very scene she enters, impulsively prompting Kaalidas to end a line of investigation that proves crucial.

Kaalidas 2 is certainly one of the most recent films to feature such dull-witted cops. For instance, while interrogating Stephen at his residence, which is on the top floor, a woman on the ground calls Kaalidas and Vaishnavi’s attention to something that’s been found outside the apartment premises. You would expect Vaishnavi to depute a couple of cops to secure Stephen. However, they desert him completely, giving him enough time to tamper with the evidence. You find similar slip-ups here and there.

The second half, especially, meanders so much that Kaalidas 2 begins to test your patience. In the midst of the constantly annoying Vaishnavi, a revenge plot featuring Kishore and Prakash Raj’s cameos, and a dull character like Stephen with no convincing logic to his behaviour, we have Kaalidas, who takes his sweet time to rise to the occasion with his detection skills.

A still from ‘Kaalidas 2’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

You certainly don’t foresee the twist in the climax, but that isn’t to say that it would leave you with a better aftertaste. If anything, it only exposes all the flab in the story; you begin to question the necessity of many of the characters and their elaborate subplots, when in fact, a leaner narrative would have made it a crisp and effective whodunit.

One doesn’t need to look far for an example of such a film; the first Kaalidas was a no-frills thriller, content with the small world its characters operated in. In fact, when Suresh Chandra Menon’s character appears briefly in the sequel, you expect him to return to help with the police procedural, or to see what happened to Kaalidas after the events of the first film. But except for a dialogue and a passing detail that he is living with his mother, the film is too busy to care about the character progression of the franchise’s titular hero.

The first film too had a similar twist towards the end, but every character served the story and not merely the final reveal. The sequel, which comes with a bigger canvas, cast and production value, comes across as an empty shell that’s too desperate to impress. Which is why even Sam CS’s remix of Bharathiyar’s ‘Chinnanchiru Kiliye’ in the climax fails to move you.

By the end of it all, you are only left craving a strong cup of coffee — one that has more kick than the film.

Kaalidas 2 is currently running in theatres