Marco: Unni Mukundan’s gorefest is one of the silliest Malayalam films, failing to bury its flaws beneath the bloodshed

Let’s start at the beginning: one of the major reasons Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy is hailed as a modern classic isn’t its portrayal of violence but how that violence serves only to deepen the narrative’s dark layers, which is precisely why the climactic twist in Oldboy lands with far greater impact than all the bloodshed combined. With a masterfully written script and a filmmaking style that challenges conventional cinematic grammar, Oldboy revealed the vast, untapped potential of visual storytelling. Many of Quentin Tarantino’s films — their problematic politics aside — also share this trait and so do movies like Bandit Queen (1994), Dogtooth (2009), Antichrist (2009) and Irreversible (2002). In these works, the violence, though explicit, only complements the narrative, never overshadowing the script or the overall quality of the film.

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In contrast, the violence in many ‘pan-Indian’ films often feels like a superficial gimmick, aimed at distracting audiences from the movies’ lack of substance. Beyond lavish production designs and star-studded casts, these films often lack depth, almost as if the makers’ creative effort went only into inventing novel ways to depict dismemberment. Marco, regarded by many as the “most violent Indian movie” now, is no exception with its creative, technical and performance aspects falling woefully short. From the outset, Marco is riddled with plot holes and the issues only worsen as the story progresses. The film begins with two youths — Victor (Ishaan Shoukath) and his best buddy Waseem — at a cage fight venue. Since Victor is visually impaired, Waseem acts as his live commentator and the two share a strong bond, with each knowing the other’s family and background well. However, moments after they leave the venue, Waseem is killed in Victor’s presence. Though unable to see the perpetrators, Victor manages to catch their scent.

Here begins a cascade of logical inconsistencies that persist throughout the film. Before his death, Waseem receives a call from his older brother Tariq, who urges him to join the drug trade with him, citing its profitability and how it would help him get out of his financial issues. Waseem refuses for the n-th time, cuts the call and discusses the situation with Victor, whose reaction clearly indicates a long-standing familiarity with Waseem’s family. If that’s the case, wouldn’t Waseem’s family, particularly Tariq, be aware of Victor’s exceptional sense of smell? As a visually impaired perfume maker, it’s also obvious that his olfactory abilities are heightened.

Watch Haneef Adeni and Unni Mukundan’s Marco trailer here:

(Spoilers ahead) Despite Victor being at the murder scene and catching the killers’ scent, Tariq — the mastermind behind his brother’s murder — never warns the assassins, members of another crime family, to avoid crossing paths with Victor. Instead, the latter brazenly walk past him as if unconcerned about being identified. If they’re so fearless, why go to the trouble of orchestrating a secret murder at all? Marco offers no answers. Moreover, in what world do organised criminals need to be taught that a perfumer’s greatest weapon is their sense of smell, which would likely be even more acute in someone who is visually impaired? In Marco, these so-called organised criminals have the looks, the physical strength and a lack of remorse, but they operate without a shred of intelligence.

Waseem’s killers — Russell (Abhimanyu S Thilakan), Devaraj (Anson Paul) and their gang — soon realise that Victor is closing in on them. They respond by kidnapping Victor and Russell ruthlessly kills him by throwing him into acid, even recording the act. This brings us to another glaring flaw that underscores how Marco was conceived without much thought: Russell is the son of Tony Isaac (Jagadish), who appears like a Don Vito Corleone in 144p and runs a gold smuggling empire akin to that of Victor’s brother, mafia boss Adattu George (Siddique). Both families operate like the Five Families of New York and knowing this connection, why would they kill Waseem in Victor’s presence and let him walk away? And after eventually killing him, how could they fail to anticipate that George and his stepbrother Marco (Unni Mukundan), the most ruthless of them all, would come after them for revenge?

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Thereon, the film falls into the all-too-familiar trap of dragging out its runtime without providing any logical reason for why the story doesn’t conclude. Featuring a large group of senseless criminals who, under the guise of showcasing ‘mass’, spare potentially threatening rivals all the time, Marco serves as a prime example of how much filmmakers have taken the ‘pan-India’ trend for granted and how hard they will try to do anything — absolutely anything — except sit down and use their brains to craft a good, sensible script.

Despite Marco openly vowing to kill everyone involved in Victor’s murder, Russell, Devaraj and Tony inexplicably spare him, missing the chance to eliminate a significant threat. Instead, they ally with Marco and George in the search for Victor’s killers, believing they can divert Marco’s attention. Even Marco, upon learning that Russell killed Victor, doesn’t act immediately. Instead, he drags out the conflict, indulging in ‘mass hero’ theatrics. One particularly absurd moment features Marco standing over Russell with a chainsaw and yet not killing him, as though waiting for a conveniently timed call from Tony offering a deal he can’t refuse. Yes, everyone, including organised criminals, can make mistakes and misjudgements. However, here, each gangster seems more stupid than the other, to the point that Marco feels like a poorly made spoof film.

While Kalai Kingson’s action choreography is impressive at many junctures, Haneef Adeni’s excessive preoccupation with escalating the bloodshed detracts significantly from the composition of stunts. (Image: Unni/Instagram)

The absurdity doesn’t stop there. After George’s gold consignment is betrayed to the authorities, he confidently declares he’ll single-handedly uncover the traitor, only to be stabbed and gravely injured by Devaraj, who ratted George out, in the very next scene. Then, Devaraj flaunts his own ‘mass appeal’ as a cold-blooded killer; but, in the very next scene, he realises George has survived, raising questions about his competence as a gangster as well. Marco is riddled with such illogical moments, which the filmmakers likely thought would be thrilling on paper but instead come across as laughably nonsensical on screen.

In another scene, Marco reassures his fiancée Maria (Yukti Thareja), saying, “Nothing will happen to you as long as I’m here,” shortly after losing his favourite brother Victor. And predictably, soon after, Maria and the rest of Marco’s family are massacred before his eyes, leaving him looking foolish. While these could have been seen as words of affirmation alone — since there’s only so much any person can do, let alone Marco — from the beginning, Haneef repeatedly presents a group of kids who glorify Marco to such an extent that viewers are led to believe he would go to any lengths to protect his family, as if he is Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) on steroids. However, the film soon shows that all Marco can do is seek revenge when his family members are brutally murdered; and when it comes to actually protecting them, he is useless.

Marco’s lack of intelligence is also glaringly evident in his irrational decision to keep his entire family confined to the Adattu house, despite the looming threat to their lives — a danger that has persisted ever since he orchestrated the killing of Tony. The only “protection” they have is Marco and George, who, in the end, fail miserably at their task, leading to the family’s brutal slaughter. Yet, the narrative keeps giving him build-up, as if he has accomplished something significant — when, in reality, he has only caused the massacre of his ‘loved’ ones. If the film hadn’t relied so heavily on gratuitous gore to divert attention, audiences would likely have noticed these glaring inconsistencies sooner.

Also, why do protagonists, despite their considerable wealth, never consider the practical solution of sending their families abroad temporarily for safety? What explains this fixation on keeping them perilously close to the villains, effectively gambling with their lives and leaving them a 50:50 chance of survival? Filmmakers must move away from such lazy conveniences and begin treating audiences’ intelligence with respect.

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Renowned filmmaker Anurag Kashyap recently mentioned that director Shankar described his upcoming film Game Changer as being tailored to match the audience’s supposedly shrinking attention spans, comparing its structure to a series of Instagram reels stitched together. In a similar vein, Marco feels like a collection of fragmented scenes strung together, focused only on delivering relentless gore. While the film opens with Victor’s gruesome murder through acid decomposition, Marco’s first appearance — after being repeatedly likened by others to the loyal guard dog of the Adattu household — shows him violently tearing apart the jaws of ferocious dogs, killing them. While Kalai Kingson’s action choreography is impressive at many junctures, Haneef Adeni’s obsession with escalating the bloodshed detracts significantly from the composition of stunts and Unni Mukundan, despite his muscular physique, fails to convincingly portray an aura of pure evil in either his demeanour or essence.

In one scene, Marco, with his hands tied, resorts to using his teeth as a weapon, even biting off a rival’s ear. To underscore his unrepentant nature, he is then shown attempting to cut the ropes binding him by using a knife lodged in someone’s throat. Then, driven by revenge for his friend’s severed hand, he gruesomely dismembers several of Russell’s men using a chainsaw. Later, he is also shown blasting Devaraj after the latter attacks George and kidnaps Victor’s pregnant girlfriend Isha (Durva Thaker).

 

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In another scene, Marco declares to Maria, “This toxicity and obsession is my love,” a line so forced and artificial, just like the movie’s colour grading, that it seems inserted purely to justify his behaviour. The film also attempts a homage to Oldboy’s iconic corridor fight, but subpar cinematography and choppy editing reduce the sequence to an unpleasant visual experience, potentially causing motion sickness and claustrophobia.

Throughout, Haneef treats each scene like an independent reel crafted to go viral on social media, with every moment having some shocking element that adds little to the ailing narrative. One such instance features Tony casually revealing his bisexuality, while another has Marco gruesomely ripping out Russell’s heart in the climax. However, at no point does the film make one feel that Haneef and his team read the script in its entirety, as had they done so, they might have realised how incoherent it is, offering little more than shock value through scenes such as forcefully extracting a fetus from a woman’s body or brutally smashing a child’s head with a gas cylinder.

Unni Mukundan with Abhimanyu S Thilakan on the sets of Marco. (Image: Unni/Instagram)

In one of the most bizarre moments, crafted to emphasise just how ‘massy’ Marco is, we see him take a leisurely shower, dress in a fine outfit and meticulously groom himself before hunting down his rivals right after they’ve slaughtered his family. Here, Marco almost looks like he isn’t driven by rage, nor does he pause to consider that his enemies might escape in the meantime. Instead, he calmly readies himself, while his rivals wait in the same godown as always, seemingly anticipating his arrival to wipe them out. What’s more, in the climax, Marco manages to defeat the rival gang single-handedly, just hours after being beaten to a pulp and having his family killed. If he did have the strength to take down a ruthless gang of criminals, why didn’t he use it when his own family was being slaughtered? What kind of logic is that? And, much like most other recent films striving to be ‘pan-Indian,’ Marco wraps up by hinting at a potential sequel — even though the makers lacked sufficient creative depth to deliver a single compelling movie. What to say? ‘Pan-Indian’ films have become a joke now.

Cinema cannot exist in a vacuum; it’s all about the discussions that follow. In the Cinema Anatomy column, we delve into the diverse layers and dimensions of films, aiming to uncover deeper meanings and foster continuous discourses.