Billa 2 – The beginning
When I sat down to review Billa 2 – The beginning, I had to answer 2 questions to myself first…
1. Did I like the movie?
2. If yes why and if no why?
As everyone knows, this movie is a prequel to a hit gangster movie Billa (2007), and Billa is loosely based on the story of real life gangster “Charles Shobraj” and the character in the original was reprised by south Indian demy god Rajinikanth (1980). The original by itself was a remake of DON (1978) starring Big B.
Now coming back to present, let’s try to find answers to the earlier questions. The movie starts off English style where Ajith is surrounded by goons with gun on his temple and he punches out a dialogue “En vazhkayile Ovvoru Naalum Ovvorru Nimishamum, aein Ovvoru Nodiyayum naana sethukunath da” (every day, every minute, every second in my life is sculpted by me) and he ends up killing all the goons. Then, the movie starts with portrait story telling (of the hero’s child hood, mass killings and war in Sri Lanka) techniques twined with the title credits. Ajit (David Billa) is shown as a refugee, who migrates to a shore refugee shelter in coastal Tamil Nadu, the refugees there are shown as being ill treated and it’s controlled by a corrupt drug peddler cop Raghubir Sinha (Krishna Kumar – Malayalam actor) who is the officer in charge.
David Billa and Ranjith (Yog Japee, who is Billa’s right hand) are asked to deliver a truck load of fish and a police raid on the way shows that the truck load is full of diamonds. From there starts Billa’s journey in dark and violent ways from Chennai, to Goa, to Georgia. In Chennai he meets and works with local diamond smuggler Selvaraj (Ilavarasu), there he meets Kotiswara Rao (Manoj K jayan) and enters the drug business eventually meeting and making friends with Abbasi – Rao’s boss (Sudhanshu Pandey) and finally meeting Dimitri the Georgian arms dealer (Vidyut Jamwal) and the dirty politicians as well.
The story is not the movie’s strength and thus if am to give you any more details the theater will lose more prospective watchers. Thus I will only focus on the +’ses and –‘ses of the movie. The biggest plus in the movie is performance by its lead, Ajith is like Atlas in this movie, and he carries it on his shoulders with ease. Ajith has become a synonym of sorts to style in Tamil cinema and this movie is no different, the movie is shot stylishly with exotic locales, ambience e.t.c and it’s a high tech movie comparable to the likes of English gangster flicks. Camera work by Nirah Shah is fantastic and Editor Sreekar Prasad has had to play with tones and tones of “Cuttings and Ottings” to get this kind of an output. Sudhansu, Manoj K jayan and Vidyut played their part to the T and has helped Ajith with weight sharing. The dialogues penned by Ee. Raa. Murugan is fantastic and fits the bill for its punches and gangster-istic approach
Now for the –‘ses, first to come on mind is the performance by its leading ladies, Parvathy Omanakuttan could have been replaced with a statue, am sure it would have given a better show, Bruna Abdullah is nothing more than skin show. Though neither of them has any performance scope, they have not tried to make use of any opportunities they could have got. Director Chakri Toleti shows amateurish sparks at times and is lucky that he gets to direct Ajith in his second movie. Though it’s not known if the movie from the outset was supposed to look like an English gangster flick or is it Chakri’s idea to completely revamp it after he got on the helm of the movie, Whichever way the outcome can be appreciated as this movie reminds us of the Godfather fraternity for its style elegance, gun fires and skin show. The director decided to not sink the movie with humor, masala and koothu and thus not breaking the flow of the film. Songs in the movie are nothing big to write about, all were picturised on scantily clad women. I read in the paper that the crew has decided to include “idayam” song which is the only soft number, I wonder where they plan to include it and am sure its picturised with Parvathy Omanakuttan (Good that I dint get to see her expression less face for another 5 minutes in the song).
Did I like the movie?. Well, I guess I liked the way the movie was made, making prequels are quite a tough ask as everyone tends to compare and relate it to its original and that way the director was able to make it. David Billa’s history is now clear. I would still say it’s a masala movie where the protagonist kills a hundred men, but with machine guns which is more realistic. I will rate this movie 3 of 5 and commend Ajith for carrying the entire weight of one movie, no wonder why he the only actor whose movies guarantee maximum opening in Tamil Nadu
