Movie: Sardar 2
Rating: 1/5
Banner: Prince Pictures and Ivy Entertainment
Cast: Karthi, SJ Suryah, Malavika Mohanan, Ashika Ranganath, Yogi Babu, Rajisha Vijayan and others
Music Director: Sam CS
DOP: George C Williams
Editor: Vijay Velukutty
Production Designer: Rajeevan Nambiar
Producers: S. Lakshman Kumar and Ishan Saksena
Directed by: P.S. Mithran
Release Date: September 10, 2026
Karthi’s Sardar was a good hit in Tamil, which led to a sequel. Sardar 2 was also promoted well in Telugu and has now arrived in theatres.
Let’s find out its merits and demerits.
Story
Vijay Prakash (Karthi) is a RAW agent who encounters agent Walrus, who hands him a metal key before dying.
Vijay and his colleagues at the agency eventually crack what the key represents. They discover a video of former agent Zara (Malavika Mohanan) debriefing her mission, in which she reveals details of Operation Doku.
During the operation, she and agent Sardar (Karthi) successfully brought a medicine from Japan that could serve as an antidote to a bioweapon.
Many years later, they face a new threat from a man called Black Dagger (SJ Suryah), who is trying to find three keys that can activate the old bioweapon.
At the same time, they discover that Sardar was never killed and is still alive.
How do the father-and-son agents stop Black Dagger’s mission? That forms the rest of the story.
Performances
Karthi plays dual roles as father and son, with both characters working as RAW agents. He is good in the younger versions of both roles. However, his old-man look is gaudy, and the makeup and getup do not work at all.
Malavika Mohanan gets some action scenes in the first half as her younger character.
Ashika Ranganath, who plays Malavika’s daughter, does not get any standout sequences. She does not even have a song, which, in this case, is actually a relief.
SJ Suryah is an actor who needs to be controlled by the director. He often goes overboard with his performances and dialogue delivery, and he does the same here. His villain character is filled with loud dialogues and exaggerated mannerisms.
Yogi Babu’s comedy is silly, especially considering that his character works in an intelligence agency.
Technical Aspects
Sam CS has provided only one song, which plays in the background.
The background score sounds like a poor imitation of Mission: Impossible and does not create the required impact.
The cinematography is lavish, but the visual effects are mostly subpar.
The editing is one of the film’s biggest drawbacks. The second half, in particular, is unbearably long and keeps dragging without any sense of urgency.
Highlights
The message about antibiotics
Drawbacks
Boring narration
Scenes that feel borrowed from various Hollywood films
Poor writing and lack of thrilling moments
Excessive runtime
Weak editing
Analysis
Spy films in Indian cinema have increasingly become template-driven. Whether in Telugu, Hindi or Tamil cinema, many filmmakers borrow themes, sequences and ideas from Hollywood spy movies and try to Indianise them.
Initially, such attempts worked, especially when Yash Raj Films popularised this style in Bollywood. But over the years, it has become a formula, with most spy thrillers beginning to look and feel the same.
Eventually, several films in this genre, including War 2, Akhil’s Agent and Nikhil Siddhartha’s Spy, turned out to be major disappointments.
Karthi’s Sardar 2, the sequel to Sardar, is the latest addition to that list.
The film starts like a regular spy thriller with Karthi’s younger character. It gains some momentum when Malavika Mohanan’s character enters and begins revealing details about their old mission involving Sardar.
The episode set in the 1980s near the Andhra-Tamil Nadu border is somewhat interesting. It revolves around a bioweapon and a medicine called Celestene, which is available only in Japan. The characters travel to Japan to bring the medicine to India.
Though the sequence is lengthy, this portion at least makes some sense and offers a little engagement.
After that, however, the film begins to go downhill. Even before the interval arrives, boredom starts to set in.
To its credit, the film sticks to its central spy-thriller plot without getting distracted by unnecessary romantic tracks between Malavika Mohanan and Karthi or between Karthi and Ashika Ranganath. There are no forced romantic songs either.
Yet, it still does not work because almost everything feels familiar, borrowed and recycled from older films.
The lengthy and dragged-out narration in the second half tests the audience’s patience even further.
A villain creating awareness about antibiotics and delivering lengthy lectures makes you wonder whether he is actually the hero or the villain. Thus, SJ Suryah’s villainy is equally tedious, while the climax is a major letdown.
The climax episode itself runs for nearly 40 minutes, and the entire second half feels like a separate two-hour movie.
The attempts at comedy involving Indian intelligence agents are even sillier.
Director P.S. Mithran appears to lose control of the film even before the interval. Whatever follows only makes the experience messier.
Overall, Sardar 2 is another disappointing spy thriller from Indian cinema. It is Karthi’s War 2 moment; bland, overlong and thoroughly boring.
Bottom Line: Dud
