Indian

Chandrabose is a civil servant who works on bribes; he signs nothing without one and considers this normal. His father Senapathy is an old man who once fought in the independence struggle. There is a serial killer in the city executing the corrupt. The killer is the old man, and his own son is on the list. The subject is not crime but the account between generations. The gap between what Senapathy paid for independence and the state of the country now feeds all of the film's anger. The question of what he will do about his son reduces the argument to a single scene at the end. The form runs in two times: the killings now and the struggle of Senapathy's youth. The past sections are large in scale with detailed period design. Kamal Haasan plays both the old father and the son; long prosthetic make-up sessions created the older man, and the difference in voice and posture the actor used to separate the two became the most cited thing about the film. Shankar directs, and it was submitted as India's Oscar entry that year. Manisha Koirala and Urmila Matondkar are in the cast, with music by A. R. Rahman. Who it is for: viewers who like political Indian cinema and Kamal Haasan's transformation roles. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by violence offered as a solution; the film largely endorses its hero's method.