So Satya, a beggar looking for his lost sister, gets the opportunity to live the life of a billionaire when the people close to the billionaire transfer his life and memories into the body of the billionaire in return for a simple enough demand - be the face for the billionaire's company so the plotters can get rich. What happens when the two parties get into a conflict, and will Satya eventually find his sister?
The plot for the movie is simple enough and it employs an oft used concept - the conflict between living a rich but controlled life and living a poor but free one. The stakes in this case are the knowledge of a crime committed by the evil party and the search for a long lost loved one. With Satya unable to reveal the crime given how silly explaining things would be, and being unable to search for his sister given his new billionaire image, the simplistic plot setup is fairly convincing. But the payoffs feel forced. What happens once Satya and the plotters get into conflict for instance, ruins the entire movie. He just kills them all
Still, the movie manages to bring up interesting concepts post this as Satya forces himself to live the life of a billionaire. If you think about it, it is a neat little concept. Pichaikaran 1 made the protagonist live the life of a beggar, and the roles are reversed in the second part. The problem is, not many would relate to a conflict like this. With the plotters out of the way, Satya could simply live life on his own terms. The past few days could simply have counted for a swift change in fortunes and he could now have lived the life of a multi billionaire. And it's here that he movie gets fantastical and loses its real world connect. And it's also here that the script writers unleash a whole political economical disaster that is laughable and utterly absurd. Satya launches a program called anti bikili- what's with the name? Duh nothing. Just needed a catchphrase is all. They now get subsidised food, groceries, homes and everything, and there is a strong demand from that all billionaires should do something similar. The entire concept of a free market is thrown under a bus. How will this be sustained for instance? Resources after all, are limited. Product prices at the end of the day are majorly determined by the free market in modern times. Supply shortage at the end of the day, will drive prices up. Duh this is what happens when you try to get too smart but don't really understand what you're doing.
As with all mainstream Tamil movies, keep your brains in the car or in the fridge before you turn this one on. A beggar who's been in jail, probably never fired a bullet before, can accurately shoot a moving target hundreds of meters away in the beach with the wind blowing in his face. And oh he can drive a motorboat. And he's an economist. And he knows the law. And he can bash up 50 thugs at a time. WHATTT?! The moral compass of the movie is... mob rule is legitimate rule. If the people like it, it should be encouraged. Just think about the problems this could create in a functional society
Pichaikaran 1 was an interesting watch because it contained a unique setup, an interesting concept never seen before that the audience could relate with. The difficulty that a millionaire would have in living the life of a beggar was well captured and superbly executed so despite its flaws, it was thoroughly entertaining fare. Pichaikaran 2 wildly meanders between reason and fantasy, is unfocused and barely believable. It tries to be too many things all at once and ends up being neither.
