Marco Movie Review: The stylish Unni Mukundan action thriller falters due to a weak script

Unni Mukundan in and as ‘Marco’ | Image Credit: SPECIAL EVENT

To Marco has been rated as A makes sense when you watch the movie with Unni Mukundan title. This is a trigger warning for those who cannot stand the sight of blood and have no stomach for all manner of mutilation of humans and sometimes dogs. With that out of the way, let’s get to Marcowritten and directed by Haneef Adeni, also the man behind the 2019 film Michaelstarring Nivin Pauly. Although there has been speculation that Marco was a spinoff, the production team has been mum about the connection.

Marco (Unni Mukundan) and his adopted older brother, Adattu George (Siddique), make their first appearance in Michael. And they do that in this film too; Marco and George are brothers. George’s father brought Marco home as a child and raised him as one of his children.

To say it’s an action thriller doesn’t capture the full extent of the ‘action’ in it. It’s high on ‘mass-y’ gore. The plot is quite simple – the blind younger brother of Adattu George, Victor, is murdered because he is a ‘witness’ to murder. And Marco will do anything for his family – kill and die if necessary. But he mostly does killing and maiming. Marco is about how the brothers destroy their brother’s killers – Tony Issac and his sons. The first half of the film lays the groundwork for the action that follows. In the second half, everyone in the movie seems to go crazy.

Fueled by testosterone, Marco gives its women characters little to do. You also can’t help but wonder what the police are up to when Adattu George goes around avenging his brother by shooting the people he thinks might have caused the death, or when Tony’s sons go around killing people.

Marco reminds one of Transporter series, the slaughterhouse and the carnage come to mind Dexter with a touch of Animal minus the misogyny. If this review seems fixated on the violence in the film, that’s because it is Marco is about. You leave the cinema and think about the violence and the many ways to cut, stab, slice and impale a person.

Marco requires that you approach it as pure fiction and if you go looking for reason, disappointment awaits. If you like an action movie with lots of stunts and few dialogues, this would be your jam.

The writing, what of it, flies after the first half, and then it’s chaos. In an action-driven film like Marcothe writing matters less than the stunt choreography and cinematography, both of which score highly. Cinematographer Chandru Selvaraj has done a good job with the extremely stylish frames, as has composer/lyricist Ravi Basrur. The background score of one of the first matches, before the interval, makes the whole sequence look poetic.

The character arcs and plot lines could have been developed better, for example the backstory of Marco and his fiancee or of Tony and his sons. The only relationship explored, if at all, is Marco’s attachment to Victor. In a film whose palette is primarily black and gray, the light and softness come in, and we get an insight into why Marco wants blood for blood.

The cast includes Anson Paul, Kabir Duhan Singh, Sreejith Ravi and some new, unknown faces among others. Jagadeesh as the English-speaking, suit-wearing villain Tony Issac is a revelation. Although we have seen him in negative roles before, he impresses as a mafiosi-like businessman who is part of a criminal syndicate.

For Unni, this role is a change, on the whole quite drastic, from his roles in recent films such as Malikapuram, Meppadiyanand Jai Ganesh. Unni’s very stylish Marco has several shades of grey; he wears his unhappiness and anger like a shield.

Touted as the most violent film in the history of Malayalam cinema, one cannot help but agree with the claim. It still begs the question: why so much of it?

Marco is currently at the cinema