'Viduthalai Part 2' Movie Review: Vetrimaaran's Preachy Yet Compelling Character Study About A Terrorist Who Becomes A Hero

Director: Vetrimaaran
Writer: Based on Thunaivan by Jeyamohan
Cast: Soori, Vijay Sethupathi, Manju Warrier, Bhavani Sre, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Rajiv Menon
Language: Tamil 

In the first part of Viduthalai, you’d remember the long trek Kumaresan (Soori) undertakes to reach the camp where he is posted as a police constable for the first time. Even for a story that takes more than five hours to unfold, you’d remember the slow pace with which he treks across terrains, water bodies and hills to finally get to the top. Until today, I felt the pacing was intentional because we needed to understand how remote and challenging it was going to be for Kumaresan to work there. Narratively too, it was important for us to register the hostile terrain everyone in this movie was fighting over, right from the locals to the police and the mining corporation that wants to set up shop there.

But as we enter the sequel, we realise soon that we’re being led down the same forest we climbed up in the first part. It remains just as hostile and inaccessible for outsiders like Kumaresan, despite having lived there for months. But then there are people like Perumal, played by Vijay Sethupathi, who seem to know every nook and corner of this forest. And so, the question remains, is this land still worth fighting for and if it is, who are we fighting to take control?

Unlike the first film which was narrated almost entirely in the form of a letter Kumaresan was writing to his mother, there are other narrators also in the sequel. Here, we get Perumal (Vijay Sethupathi) narrating his side of the story in the form of shorter flashbacks that interject smoothly as Perumal is being transported from the police camp on top of the hill to a more secure check point down below.

Until this point, we leaned on Kumaresan to understand the events that were unfolding, unsure of which side to pick. When the first film ended with Kumaresan capturing Perumal, we were still conflicted about what to feel about the leader of Makkal Padai and his mission that had eventually led to the death of dozens of innocent people at the start of the first film. But with each passing minute in Viduthalai 2, we find ourselves picking a side with real clarity. In the film's most striking scene, Kumaresan looks straight up and asks the question, “Who should we shoot, and why should we shoot them?”

This switch happens because Perumal is compelling as a character. In the first part, he was treated like a ghost, a faceless phantom we had to fear. But the second part is all about humanising this ghost, right from the time he worked as a simple schoolteacher in a small village back in the '50s.

In the earlier portions, you find him to be just as naive and unaware as Kumaresan was at the start of the film. However, by the end of the film, we catch Kumaresan as he enters the same moral dilemma Perumal found himself in when his leaders came under attack. 

This angle makes Viduthalai Part 2 special because Perumal becomes more than just a person; he becomes the personification of an ideology. You may hurt or even kill him, but he will live on in some form because of what he stands for. Kumaresan could be the next Perumal, or it could even any another constable who joined the force just when Kumaresan did.

But this notion does not extend to the concept of heroes alone. The faces of villains too might keep changing, even though their actions remain the same. In one scene, we witness factory owners and zamindars sitting around a dining table when they’re forced to come together to fight unionising labourers. In the next, we find IAS officers, ministers and police officers sit around a similar dining table, discussing a similar issue; it’s as though decades have passed, but enemies have only emerged in newer forms.

The writing is dense and complex taking us through the series of events that resulted in the formation of the Makkal Padai. In one of the film’s best dialogues, Perumal asks the police officers about the moral high ground they take when they feel it’s fair to kill one person if it results in saving the lives of five others. 

Yet despite many gems like this and the heartfelt romance between Perumal and Mahalakshmi (played by Manju Warrier), you find yourselves drifting in and out of the film towards the second half. After a point, we feel as if huge chunks of information are being dumped on us in the form of dialogues alone. The staging too, especially in scenes set within the office of senior officials, feel like they’re form another movie, hurriedly and verbose, only for the screenplay to be advanced. 

And at nearly three hours, there are entire flashbacks that feel stretched and repetitive, conveying things we’ve already understood by then. Even when we feel disconnected with the long stretches of dialogue, the film throws up so many questions about the moral dilemma felt by people like Kumaresan that we find it hard to look away. Velraj’s bleached-out visuals, paints the forests with shades that never beautifies the hardships of the people living there, just like how Illaiyaraaja’s score is most effective when he gently nudges us towards the inner layers of people like Perumal. 

It may have parts where we feel like the film meanders along a lost path — like the central characters in the film coming down the forest — but as a character sketch of a man like Perumal who is part-human, part-mythology, Viduthalai is a powerful portrait about how one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.