Like spies have dual identities, so too does Sardar 2. Pre-interval Sardar 2 feels like a very different film: a film that is energetic, alert, constantly on the move, with every piece of the puzzle organically seeming to lead to the next. In fact, for vast portions during this period, I remember thinking how cool it is that we have our own spy film that jumps between countries, that isn’t afraid to stage a fight inside a crashing aircraft, that has a cool woman spy boss unafraid to speak her mind (I only wish she had shown a little more love for Sardar’s tactical smarts).

It has all these tasteful micro-choices. For instance, it understands that a spy isn’t great because he can throw a mean punch; a truly good one finds answers even when and especially when everything around him seems to be collapsing. And so, in this first half, we see young Sardar (Karthi) constantly observing, improvising, recalculating. His greatest weapon seems to be his mind, and that’s why his trainer thinks he’s ready for this international mission. And yet, director PS Mithran remembers that he is very much a man from our land. And so, we see what it means to his father when he leaves for a mission. We see an argument, a curse that eventually comes true. Later, we hear a Murugar song playing in the background as Sardar fights to remain alive. The film understands, at least during these portions, that however far away a spy may travel, his heart still beats for home… and like home.

Even cruelty feels imaginative. When the villain, Yogi (SJ Suryah), threatens Agent Tiger using her daughter, you think it is the usual idea: threaten someone with the death of a loved one. But then Yogi clarifies that he intends to make the daughter kill a bunch of children, so she can spend the rest of her life being destroyed by guilt. It’s a particularly sadistic idea, but when you eventually understand Yogi, it makes a certain psychological sense. He understands that sometimes, living with pain can be a worse punishment than dying from it. He knows it because he lives it. And so, I liked that he uses the same strategy later on when trying to defeat Sardar (Karthi).

There’s a delicious ethical dilemma at the heart of this film, and I love it when protagonists are forced by real-world complexity to make impossible choices. Here, it’s a version of the trolley problem: Should you sacrifice a few in order to protect the many? What happens when the lives you save remain faceless, but the lives you sacrifice have faces? The lives you save offer you silence; the lives you fail to save leave you with agonising screams. And then, there’s another gorgeous idea layered over this: What if your villain is that haunting scream in flesh and bone?

There’s just so much promise here. Character arcs waiting to be unleashed. Moral complexities waiting to be unravelled. Old sacrifices waiting to demand new payment. In fact, when the interval arrived an hour and a half into the film, I remember wondering what all the fuss was about. This was a fine film so far, a film that hits the ground running and then keeps accelerating. VLF signals, deadly bacteria, aircraft hijacks… I bought it all. I rather enjoyed it all.

And then, the disorder called the curse of the second half hits the film. The familiar symptoms? Action that doesn’t quite feel memorable. A score that you wish would occasionally let up. Emotional arcs that don’t quite get explored. You actually see glimpses of this problem even in the first half: the Japanese man sacrificing himself doesn’t feel as poignant; the news of her mother’s death doesn’t quite alter Faiza’s emotional temperature. Events that should leave bruises and permanent scars seem to be brushed away as information.

Above all, story/character integrity gradually gets eroded in pursuit of ‘entertainment’. To borrow a phrase from the film itself, it’s almost as though Sardar 2 suddenly becomes determined to deliver a ‘fanboy sambavam’. And so, there are smoky hero entrances that don’t really register as highs. There are elevation moments that seem to be announcing their own elevation. Furthermore, there are comedy attempts that actively undermine the seriousness of what is going on. I think a particularly misplaced choice is to have Yogi Babu and Nizhalgal Ravi try to create laughs in the middle of a villain lecture about antibiotic resistance.

Actually, wait. I think an even more misplaced choice is the decision to channel SJ Suryah, the entertaining villain, while he is embodying Yogi, a man who could have been one of the most complicated characters in this film. SJ Suryah’s capacity for flamboyance, verbal excess and comic menace can, and has been great fun. But why must Yogi be fun? Why must a man born out of such pain and trauma be reduced to participating in hero-elevation conversations? It feels like such a betrayal of the memorable villain he could have been, of the difficult questions he could have asked this film and its protagonist.

I found myself thinking about villain figures like Wanda and Killmonger, characters whose pain gets the same dignity as the hero’s. I kept thinking about what a boy might become when he grows up orphaned, carrying horrific childhood memories and losses large enough to last several lifetimes. Yogi need not be justified. He need not even be particularly sympathetic. But surely, he deserves to be taken more seriously than this film does.

Above all, his existence ought to make Sardar uncomfortable, and not just as a passing physical tremor, but as a reminder of an ethical question he has never made peace with. Yogi isn’t simply someone Sardar must stop. He is, in some sense, the result of an impossible choice Sardar once made. This is why I liked that brief conversation where Sardar wants to know who’s behind Yogi, and the latter laughs. Somehow, all the action in the second half doesn’t quite satisfactorily explore these delicious conflicts.

There’s an even more provocative idea the film flirts with. Sardar once accepted that a small group of innocent people could be sacrificed so that a country might be saved. Yogi, one of the children who survived that sacrifice, grows up willing to make that same terrible choice. And yet, Sardar, this time, seems convinced that Yogi is an insane man who can be easily, casually, finished off. Surely, it shouldn’t be this easy? Surely, there’s a more fascinating film to be made from having these two men engage each other across a moral minefield.

Unfortunately, Sardar 2 is happy to make things comfortably easy for its hero by turning Yogi into a silly, suit-clad prospective mass murderer. Once he becomes sufficiently ridiculous and sufficiently evil, Sardar no longer needs to answer him. He merely needs to defeat him. And perhaps that’s the larger disappointment of this second half. The first half keeps creating complications; the second keeps looking for ways to simplify them or dismiss them. Dilemmas seem to be getting repurposed as opportunities for action and elevation.

At one meaningful point in the first half, an angry Zara tells Sardar that he is unfit to be a spy because he allows his heart to come in the way of his job. Sure, Sardar’s problem may be that he has ‘too much’ heart. But the film’s problem is that it doesn’t.