Summary :With a central theme that revolves around the Almighty, Kamal's Dasavatharam walks through several threads of story that spans through centuries. On the whole, the movie will surely live the interest that's created around it. The story is not mind-boggling, but well, who'd watch this movie for its story! Watch the movie and you wouldn't be disappointed a bit.

The story starts in the 12th century, with differences between Shaivas and Vaishnavas in South India. This part of the story, however, is not the central theme. The central character is that of a scientist that tries to save the world from abuse of biological warfare funded by the U.S. government. The movie culminates in the tsunami that destroyed so many lives, trying to explain why God would let such calamities happen. At the same time, the movie doesn't end up turning the atheist protagonist into a theist, which is appreciable.

Technical Departments :Makeup, Photography and Visual effects are the expected highlights of the film, and they are indeed impressive. George Bush makeup was a bit too taut sometimes but much closer to the original than the stills that circulated around the WWW in that name. It was nice of the makers to show the makeup artistes working behind the scenes for all the ten roles, at the end of the movie. However, the makeup does get artificial to some extent, though the makers should be appreciated for this bold step.

Visual effects were quite good and comparable with the Hollywood films. The last fight between the killer and martials arts teacher (both played by Kamal Hasan) is particularly impressive as far the effects go. The tsunami is shown well, albeit a bit artificial at times. The taking has some inconsistencies and absurdities, such as showing both sects (Vadagalai and Thengalai) of Sree Vaishnavaites in the same family, showing the CM of Dec. 2004 (tsunami time) Jayalalithaa supervising the tsunami damage from a helicopter (cut scene) but referring to Karunanidhi as Tamilnadu CM, showing the scientist's name in Telugu subtitles as "Govind Ramachandran" while his name in Telugu version is Govind Raju, using the Shaiva piligrim town Chidambaram for a Vaishnava-based story (for political equality?), cancer getting cured with a gunshot, etc.. Dialogues are okay. Comedy is minimal but in good taste, particularly through the RAW official's role.

The director touches through several aspects including Telugu language not being used for conversations among Telugus, smuggling of sand in beaches, U.S. President Bush's spending money on destructive technologies, etc. Songs fail to impress, both because of music (Himesh Reshammiya) and choreography. DeviSri Prasad's re-recording is fitting.

Last Word :The movie doesn't have a strong story-line and gets the typical K.S. Ravikumar-way (a la Panchatantram) of chasing one another, but is worth watching as Kamal's magnum opus. The story might not catch up well with all sections of audiences.