Movie: KO 2
Direction: Sarath
Cast: Bobby Simha, Prakash Raj, Nikki Galrani, Bala Saravanan
Music: Leon James
Cinematographer: Philip Sundar
Editor: Kevin
Genre: Thriller, Political
Rating: ∗∗½
What is it about: A political thriller, where a common man kidnaps the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, to make his point on the current state of politics. The film is directed by debutante Sarath.
Why it’s disappointing: The only reason the audiences were quite excited to catch this flick and were in anticipation of the release was due to the impression “KO” had created. This is not a sequel or doesn’t connect to any character from the previous film. But the title gave a lift to this film before its release. This one is another example of well marketed product not living up to its promise.
The director takes you for a ride on stupidity for the entire first half. He tests your patience to the core. Especially the romantic scenes between Nikki and Simha. You can’t even call them romantic, it gets worse with Bobby Simha in a romantic duet song. After watching him perform, I could only remember the dialogue from the film “Soodhu Kavvum”….”Yen Intha Moonji le romance eh vara maatingathu?” Pardon my TANGLISH.
The heroine Nikki was just used for her looks and to have a female lead as a default. The movie seemed little too easy due to lazy writing. If a Chief Minister is kidnapped, it’s a big deal and the movie doesn’t ponder that factor at all. You see just 2 cops at the site with a small back up team and all of a sudden you see Special Forces who seemed too incapable of pulling an operation. Cinematic liberty was taken for granted in “KO 2”.
The dialogues in the first half seemed like ripped from FB walls of many during the floods in Chennai, which sounded so familiar. John Vijay and Bala Saravanan’s comedy was tad bit too much, which hardly brought in some laughs. Even until interval, Sarath doesn’t seem to get to the point.
What to watch out for: Post interval, it heats up a beat with few engaging scenes between Simha and Prakash Raj. Prakash Raj being a versatile actor, plays the role of Yogeeswaran with ease. Simha tried his best in the second half to make up the disastrous first half. Still Simha has a long way to go in terms of carrying a film as a lead.
Karunakaran comes for a very short period, but his character gets registered due to his commendable performance.
The second half has few dialogues which attracted huge applause from the audience. These scenes kind of uplifted the mood of audience, who were snoozing from the first half.
The cinematography by Philip & Venkat was great which was backed by Kevin with a neat edit keeping it short. The music by Leon James was good, but the way album was promoted, we hardly got anything to experience on screen.
Verdict: Sarath’s “KO 2” is way far from KV Anand’s “KO”. The title baton was passed on, but the wisdom wasn’t. A nonsensical first half, followed by an average engaging second half. To be honest can be missed, you won’t regret it.
