Mark movie review: Kichcha Sudeep’s festive turn is unremarkable, despite mild sparks

The nexus’s barbaric kingpin Bhadra (Naveen Chandra) finds his grand plans being jeopardised by his own younger brother, Rudra, while chief-minister-aspirant Adikeshava (Shine Tom Chacko) turns the city of Mangaluru upside down in the search for a mobile phone. Mark might have planned to merrily drink his suspension time away, but when his mother ends up getting attacked during all the aforementioned commotion, he finds himself suddenly in the thick of a deadly battle. He, too (just as Max did), gets roughly 24 hours to finish the game in the company of a few colleagues, among whom lurk a couple of moles.

Vijay Karthikeyaa imagines a more complex setting than the one in his previous film, where deceit, chaos and confusion have ample opportunity to show up at each turn. The film also compels the titular character to employ his mind as much as, if not more than, his physical prowess, and an intricate cat-and-mouse chase enters the fray to suggest a potentially worthwhile entertainer. Yet, whenever those sparks of promise (mildly) surface, they are doused almost immediately by a narrative that is least focused on or invested in what it wants to communicate, or what it wishes to be in the first place.

Mark works in ways of self-sabotage, in that it never allows for any drama or narrative tension to build through its 144-minute runtime. It throws countless tiny conceits at us for the longest time, but every time we feel that it will narrow down to at least one of them, an unnecessary twist occurs to deflect from the course. The dense material doesn’t follow logical reasoning either, and consequently, the film is crowded by characters with little to no purpose and individual motives that do not make much sense.

The entire Rudra angle, for instance, doesn’t reveal itself to be a smart setup when you realise that the man has gone to outrageous lengths (involving kidnappings, red herrings and whatnot) just so that he can elope with his lover. A majority of the other devices, too, are in place without being of any use, and the plot that had once branched out in multiple directions, starts to run in circles in the pre-climactic portion.

While Sudeep’s character in Max (2024) used violence way too much to his convenience, his counterpart in Mark is downplayed considerably. Ajay Markandeya, in that vein, is tailor-made for the actor to showcase his impressive screen presence as well as a showmanship that has earned him fans over the years. His Ajay Markandeya is fittingly devoid of many frills – no romance angle, sappiness, etc. – and is someone firmly rooted in the story.

However, the writing also strips him of the grandness that the character ought to have, and it is odd that the marquee name here doesn’t feature all that flatteringly in the plot until the near-end. Sudeep does get an intro song, as well as a special dance number (featuring Nishvika Naidu), a couple of action blocks and more, but the film doesn’t generate those whistle-worthy moments that one seeks from a star vehicle of this kind. The problem, perhaps, lies right there, in the in-betweenness: Vijay Karthikeyaa’s film is neither tethered to a realistic tone, nor is it a hyper-stylised affair.

Watch Mark movie trailer here:

The rest of the cast doesn’t fare very well either; dependable names like Naveen Chandra, Shine Tom Chacko, Gopalkrishna Deshpande, Yogi Babu and others get excruciatingly little from the writing, just as Roshni Prakash, Archana Kottige and others. B Ajaneesh Loknath’s music seems to belong to the same repository that most composers are extracting from of late: a kind of blaring electronica that serves very well for a teenager’s WhatsApp or Instagram status.

Shekar Chandru’s cinematography incorporates a few interesting elements, such as the lighting and the colour palette, but it isn’t allowed to elevate the material. For the Kannada viewer, the lack of lip-sync in certain characters’ delivery might be all the more grating on the nerves, as the below-par VFX work in certain places would.

Mark might disappoint those who looked forward to it, but it will be particularly disappointing among those who spot a sliver of potential in it and later witness it being squandered completely. It’s a film that could have been the right platform for Kichcha Sudeep, and the actor appears to be on board for the task as well. But it needed to be far more focused and a lot less lazy than what is on display here; so, your Christmas weekend might be decided on your level of expectation.

Mark movie cast: Kichcha Sudeep, Naveen Chandra, Shine Tom Chacko, Gopalkrishna Deshpande, Yogi Babu, Roshni Prakash, Archana Kottige
Mark movie director: Vijay Karthikeyaa
Mark movie rating: 2.5 stars