Director: Karthick Naren
Cast: Arun Vijay, Prasanna, Priya Bhavani Shankar
From the pre-release promos of Mafia, or more obviously from the title itself, it was quite clear what we were going to be served in terms of the content on screen. I was prepared for a cat and mouse game, with one of those ‘hunter becomes the hunted’ clichés and I wasn’t entirely wrong.
The story revolves around a narcotics investigation officer Aryan (Arun Vijay) and his bid to nab the city’s prime mafia king pin (Divakar played by Prasanna). But he has a problem-he doesn’t even know who Divakar is or how he looks like and all his team’s efforts always seem to hit a dead end. I was actually impressed with a couple of these early scenes, especially the one where cheeky interrogative visuals play as Aryan explains the different levels of the drug mafia hierarchy in the background.
From the word go, these scenes are also garnished with a variety of noirish tropes: sauvé visuals, rasping slow-mo shots, neon drenched lighting, a western-heavy background score and dapper looking characters. This results in the creation of a spectacularly stylish sensory ecosystem within the film, that just needs a solid story and some intelligent screenwriting to complete the jigsaw. Unfortunately, this is where the film falls way short.
The writing is just pedestrian for most parts. Even a little amateurish, in fact. There is an obvious dialogue overload. As the old adage goes, brevity is the soul of wit and this is even more relevant in a visual medium like cinema where characters have to speak only when images can’t! Karthick Naren seems to have completely ignored it here. Sample this-Aryan enters the scene of crime where an important character has been brutally murdered. The body is still sitting on the couch, with a gaping, bloody hole in the head. He then enquires with an officer on the scene as to how this happened. The officer replies matter-of-factly that it was a gunshot to the head. Well, duh. What did he expect to hear? Corona Virus?! This is just one example and I won’t even bother giving others as there are just so many.
The story also lacks any form of unpredictability or novelty. It’s probably nothing you haven’t seen before and there is really no hook that keeps you guessing or in suspense. Okay, there’s a mildly interesting twist right at the end. But by the time you journey to that point, you’re quite exhausted and it does little to really rattle you.
Casting and lack of depth in the character sketches are also major let downs. Prasanna delivers a subtly brilliant performance (doesn’t he always), but I wasn’t really convinced with the casting of Priya Bhavani Shankar to play the role of Aryan’s sidekick. She wasn’t helped by the fact that her character sketch itself was woefully under-developed. There is also an almost abnormal effort to make everyone look and sound cool. For the number of times the Narcos themed ringtone blared out of Aryan’s phone, I half expected Pablo Escobar to actually show up in a cameo or something!
Karthick Naren is a talented filmmaker, no doubt. D16 was a truly groundbreaking film when it released in 2016. He’s been under the cosh a bit after that, with his second completed feature Naragasooran yet to see the light of day. And let’s not forget, he’s all of 25 years old. He will definitely have better outings in his career, but unfortunately, if I were studying films for an exam, Mafia is one chapter I would have definitely skipped!
Overall rating: 2/5
