In an otherwise unwatchable thriller that prioritises swag over everything else, there’s a handful of moments with genuine spark which suggests a film with particularly idiosyncratic ambitions.
One of these is an interrogation scene in which the character played by Gayathri Suresh negotiates with two nosy police officers. Just when you think of the need for this scene, the camera angle shifts downward to capture the top angle, drawing our attention to Gayathri’s naked legs. It’s staged awkwardly and one can make the case for it being her negotiation tactic. Linger a second longer and it’s just the film’s way to pay tribute to the infamous interrogation scene from Basic Instinct (1993) featuring Sharon Stone in similar predicament. After working overtime to build a world that’s part Guy Ritchie, part Latin American gang movie, it feels refreshing to see this hat-tip to classic 90’s Hollywood.
I felt a similar rush of excitement in another sequence that takes place earlier. It’s the one in which Vediamo (Chemban Vinod Jose) and his gang sit along a long table drinking as they hatch a plan to make real money. The staging feels odd here as well, but it’s a trippy visual idea to conjure the imagery of the last supper with a statue of Jesus Christ in the background. It’s not that such scenes make up for the monotony you feel through the rest of the film, but you sense the aspiration for a film that seemed very cool, at least on paper.
It’s not that the makers are unaware of the predictability of their source text, they’re after all the team that created dynamic films such as Angamaly Diaries and Anchakkallakokkan (2024). It’s perhaps that they relied a bit too heavily on the film’s flavour and swag to power over what it lacked in terms of real drama. Or it could even be the disconnect we feel with all the central characters when the setting feels too farfetched to be taken seriously.
This was always going to be a risk when characters come with names like Vediamo or Yoyaki as they operate out of places called ‘D Colony’, especially when you’re trying to root these characters in Kerala’s Latin Catholic coastal community. Chemban’s ability to draw flavour and a uniquely lived-in feel was the highlight of the films he’s written so far, including the particularly rewatchable Bheemante Vazhi (2021), but it’s this aspect that we miss most in Disco.
And it’s not that he hasn’t create interesting characters here. We enter their world first through the character played by Meera Vasudevan, Vediamo’s sister who might have a drinking problem. She appears to be a widower too and it’s through her that we first feel the sense of a family at the core of this violence. But even after her introduction, she’s treated unfairly as a prop, focussing unnecessarily on the silly amusement it derives from showing a woman speaking expletives and smoking on screen.
But what gets you the most about Disco is its obsession with swag. Actors like Dev Mohan, Lukman Avaran and Anthony Pepe are forced to pull off slow-mo shots of them walking away from chaos, but the impact is next to zero. Instead of feeling attracted to these characters or what they’re capable of, what we’re really looking for is to see if there’s a QR Code on their clothes to check what they cost on Myntra.
The score doesn’t create the impact either and the film becomes too indulgent during its needlessly long fight sequence. Take for instance the one towards the end of the first half. The idea is to combine the visuals of a parade like costume party as a major gang war breaks out. While it’s amusing to see visuals of people dressed like Superheroes fighting it out in a local brawl, it goes on till a point when you become exhausted. The non-linear editing pattern written around characters that we’ve not fully registered, only adds to this exhaustion.
By the time Disco abandons flavour to focus on hyper-violence, the film has already slipped away. So, when we feel nothing, even when a character keeps kicking a pregnant woman right in her stomach, it’s not because you’re a terrible person. What we get is a dated film that believes swag is all you need to tell a compelling story.