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'Marco' Movie Review: In Unni Mukundan's Blood-Fest, Violence Is The Question And Also The Answer
In his element, filmmaker Haneef Adeni is something of a Picasso of pain, a visionary for violence; as psychotic as it may sound, he finds lyricism in the way action blocks are staged in 'Marco'
Director: Haneef Adeni
Writer: Haneef Adeni
Cast: Unni Mukundan, Jagadeesh, Siddique, Kabir Duhan Singh
Language: Malayalam
The blood begins to flow even before the first scene in Marco. For a film about a bastard son avenging the murder of his adopted brother, it’s appropriate for even the opening credits to show his family tree in the form of a (literal) bloodline, as blood flows from one generation to next. Haneef Adeni, after the unwatchable comedy Ramachandra Boss & Co, returns home to a world he is most familiar with, in Marco. All his obsessions return too, including the Biblical references, Christian symbolism, Malayali men dressed for black tie events in peak summer, and the cringiest of English dialogues that are too lethal even for TikTok.
Take this as an example of exhibit four: When Marco (Unni Mukundan) pays a visit to his nemesis Tony (Jagadeesh) at the latter's evil lair, Tony shows him around and confirms that this is the place where he “brings his chicks.” But then he pauses, staring down at Marco with an inscrutable expression not yet known to mankind. He repeats the line again, and grabs him by the hand to announce, “I’m bisexual, you know?” letting out an evil laugh.
Judging by the heightened music and the slow-mo staging, this admission of sexuality is meant to make Tony infinitely scarier. Not that we’re expecting any sort of wokeness in Haneef Adeni’s cinema, but this is wildly regressive, even in a film where women get less than two-minutes of screen time.
This is one of a dozen such lines in a film in which characters do not speak in either Malayalam or English; every single dialogue, even in casual settings, is forced to sound like a punchline. When they work, like when Siddique’s character George announces his revenge right in the middle of church, you sort of understand what they’re going for. But when it doesn't, like when Marco declares that he’s the “wrong, wrong, wrong guy!”, you begin to value the ability of actors like Yash for pulling off ridiculous punch dialogues like he was born to.
But the problem isn't in wanting to write and then deliver pompous dialogue. With actors like Yash or Prabhas, they tint such lines with humour to make it seem as though they are aware of how absurd all this is. But in Marco, everything is so self-serious that you want to fast forward past the dialogues and drama to get straight to the action. It's this lack of emotion or an original plotline that renders Marco hollow.
Once it gets past the oddly-staged drama and futile attempts at style, Marco finally enters the only zone that mattered, as it was touted to be the "most violent Indian film ever". Haneef Adeni may not be the strongest of writers, but to give credit where its due, he's something of a genius at imagining (and pulling off) the most shocking action scenes in all of Malayalam cinema. Some of them, including the one in which Marco tears open a Belgian Malinois by its jaws, as though he’s opening a bag of chips, isn’t for the faint-hearted.
In his element, Adeni is something of a Picasso of pain, a visionary for violence. As psychotic as it may sound, he finds lyricism in the way he stages action blocks, including a breathtaking single-take as Marco pummels through 50 to 60 men as he climbs up the stairs. More than screenwriting, the exercise that lead to Marco was most certainly a series of torture techniques that simply needed to look like a movie.
The difference isn’t just in the way these scenes are imagined, with oceans of fake blood splattering everywhere; it works because Adeni has a peculiar eye for such scenes. Take the example of the way we first get introduced to George. We see a steady cam shot following the POV of their pet dog before we finally reach a majestic George seated on a wingchair. In other instance, the camera does an entire 360 before we realise that the arm we were staring at had already been disjointed from its body.
It’s shocking and relentless even for those who grew up playing the most violent of video games. This devotion to death is such that the film is almost entirely monochromatic, in various shades of grey. The only instances in which we see any colour is when it’s the reds of blood or the yellows of fire. It’s not that we’ve not seen all of this before, but there’s a consistency of vision and an unapologetic attitude that makes Marco worth respecting.
Meanwhile, Ravi Basrur’s score is deafening without a single moment of silence throughout the film. The performances too are only in service of the action scenes — especially those of the generic bad guys — which are all interchangeable with each other. But since when have we become so demanding of our dumb-action-movies? In Marco, they sell you a scene in which a five-year-old child is crushed by the bad guy using a gas cylinder. There are no rules or mercy as we wait impatiently for Marco to return the favour, hoping the bad guy gets it back so brutally that you struggle to hold down your lunch.