2: 0 Teaser, Sound & Fury, Hopefully Signifying Something

It is  imperative for Shankar’s 3D monster-budgeted  2:O to click. The  film has gone grossly over-budget and needs  to earn back  a large chunk of the  investment to be  considered  a non-loser.

Finally  the  first official teaser is out . Weirdly,there  are  a lot of flying cellphones  in  the  frames. We don’t know if they are meant to be birds shaped as  mobile instruments  or more intriguingly, metaphors  for  our collective  need  to just toss the darn thing out of  the nearest window.A  time to de-tox brought on by Akshay  Kumar’s  arch villainy. Be as it might, the  sight of mobiles  flying out of startled hands is more hilarious than horrifying.

Rajinikanth’s fans  have much to be  happy about . He is back again in two roles, one of them jovial  but no-nosense  Chittifrom the  first Robot film. Rajinikant’s name on the screen is prefixed with ‘Superstar’. Akshay Kumar’s name is  not. We see just one shot of Akshay in the trailer.That was disappointing.

According to sources close  to  the  project, the  ploy to keep Akshay’s archvillain’s character swathed  in  enigma is  not unplanned. The  director Shankar wants  an aura of ambivalence to  encircle  Akshay, as  his plans of global domination are not entirely megalomanical.

“His character  is  not  just a straightforward  villain to offset Rajinkanth’s character. On the  contrary, Akshay is quite  a hero himself,” says  the   source in the know.

We don’t really get to know  much about Akshay’s character in the  first teaser,except that he looks  hideous. It takes a whole lot of  prosthetics  to make  a man as  handsome as Askshay look that bad. We all have our secret  fantasies, I guess.

A  second teaser where  Akshay would be  the focus of interest  will soon be out. In the meanwhile the  ‘epic’ quotient  in  the first teaser is pretty high. The  special effects which have  undergone  an enormous  amount of transition ,  are adequate enough to  justify  an English-language  version  of  2: 0  for the European and American market.

The  sound design by Resul  Pookutty captures  the  crackle and hiss of  flying  objects with  an immediacy  and authenticity that is rare  in our cinema.  But Rahman’s music seems  pale. Apparently  a  non-vocal A R  Rahman composition was planned  as the  background score  for the teaser. But after  it got leaked the film’s crew decided to use the attention-grabbing rap number  in  background.

Would  the  film  open  on  November  29? The teaser doesn’t say. Fingers crossed.