Bazooka, a game thriller that was long in the making, is ultimately a stretched-out ego trip of an individual. Looking at the number of flashy scenes that sort of make it look really expensive on screen, borrowing a phrase from the movie feels like an apt thing to describe the film – high risk, low value. With cliched build-ups and not-so-surprising twists in the tale, debutant Deeno Dennis is trying to salvage the movie in the final bits using an eccentric Mammootty. But the damage caused by the underwhelming, over-the-top build-ups till that point was too much that this last-minute burst felt more like damage control measures.
So, the story is set against the backdrop of Kochi. It has become one of the most dangerous cities in India, with a high crime rate and goons roaming around. ACP Benjamin Joshua takes up the task of cleaning up the city, and he did a fairly solid job in that. But at one point, due to one of the actions he took during his clean-up process, a gamer starts to tease him by conducting robberies after giving him hints about it. We see Benjamin’s helplessness and how he gets help from our hero in Bazooka.
On a making level, Deeno Dennis, son of writer Kaloor Dennis, wants this film to look really swanky. And if you look at the promo materials of the movie, you can clearly see that they are pushing the fan service angle. From the introduction of Mammootty to many events happening in that first half, more than necessity, it was all just for the sake of this hero-worshipping. When we finally get to know what is the actual story here, it all comes down to one question. Why did a person decide to design this cat-and-mouse game? Since it is a spoiler, I am not revealing it. But if you can take a moment to think about that, Bazooka looks like a silly thriller.
Deeno’s writing is the main villain here. His idea on a one-liner level is interesting. The gaming backdrop is a mere setting change, and it is ultimately just a mode for one portion of the major plan. Since the concept here is somewhat generic, the structuring of the screenplay has to be done in a fresh way, and Deeno fails in that. The backstories here are obviously giving us hints about the possible twists, and when it eventually happens, it may not be precisely the way we imagined it, but it feels like a derivative of what we may have guessed or seen before.
The investigation part in certain areas looked really funny. There is one scene in the film where the bad guy is stealing a trophy, and in a room full of people looking at one monitor, only our ACP spots the obvious masked man and screams, “That’s our man.” The interval fight sequence of the movie makes sense when you look back at it after knowing the story. But again, why all these expensive plans were happening is kind of roast-worthy material. If it was L that we saw in Empuraan, here it is something else. Style is the demand of the movie, and hence Nimish Ravi’s frames have neon lights of gaming setups, retro charm of antiques, and some flatly lit setups to show the poshness. The usage of background score is way too excessive, and it kind of made me happy because the guy next to me was frequently attending phone calls, and the unending background score made it difficult for him.
Mammootty, as this mystery man with many names, gets a character that he can sleepwalk through without any challenges, and since the actor has the reputation of pulling off any look effortlessly, the fashion parade we witness in this movie will be enjoyable for die-hard fans. The area in the final bits of the film where he is sort of playing a blend of Shine Tom Chacko and Ranveer Singh felt like a slight drizzle in a largely deserted script, and I am pretty sure that whacky high might give a lot of people an illusion that they just saw something fairly nice. Gautham Vasudev Menon is also in the swagger mode, and luckily, his Malayalam wasn’t a huge problem compared to what we saw in the trailer. Hakkim Shah gets an extensive role in the film that rarely demands a great performance from him. The rest of the cast has pretty much nothing to do here other than being background artists in most of their scenes.
There is one sequence in the movie’s second half where we see how the team cracked a clue given by the antagonist on a birthday gift. It was borderline “Vappachiyude Legacy” level decoding. Bazooka is usual wine in a new bottle under a new label. But the thing is, the label is misleading, and there is no real effort to redesign the bottle. If you are someone who can watch endless mashup videos showcasing the swagger of Mammootty, then Bazooka might work for you. Mammootty has been doing some experimental stuff in the post-pandemic phase of his career. Well, this one doesn’t really fit into that.
If you are someone who can watch endless mashup videos showcasing the swagger of Mammootty, then Bazooka might work for you.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
