The Macho World Of Vysakh's Movies

From Pokkiri Raja To Turbo, The Evolution Of Vysakh's Movies

Does Turbo signal a change in the filmmaker's testosterone-driven oeuvre? Neelima Menon asks.

TWO ANOMALIES occur in Vysakh’s Turbo. Though there is a build-up to the character played by Mammootty, Jose, it doesn’t convert into a flamboyant introduction scene. On the contrary, it is a lovely scene with Jose meekly walking alongside his mother (Bindu Panicker), pleading with her to let him stay for the local church festival. More importantly, women are usually props in Vysakh’s films — either relegated to being traditional caregivers or catering to the male gaze — but not in Turbo. The two women in this narrative don’t merely have walk-on parts — perhaps due to the writer being Midhun Manuel Thomas (and not Udayakrishna, who made a living commodifying women on screen).

One look at Jose’s fierce and funny mom Rosa Kutty and you know Jose is a chip off the old block. As for the female lead, Indulekha (Anjana Jayaprakash), who is instrumental in driving the plot forward, she is no wimp either. Unlike female leads who were planted for the sole purpose of singing paeans to the hero’s glory, Indulekha has a mind of her own. Even with Jose, despite watching him torpedo an army of men single-handedly, she is very casual and blunt. And though he does arrive in the nick of time to save her, she never gives the impression of needing a “saviour”. She is very self-assured — a rarity in such superstar veneration vehicles. Otherwise, Turbo is an archetypal masala action potboiler propped up on a thin storyline meant to service the antics of the larger-than-life hero.

Unlike Tamil and Telugu cinema, Malayalam films of this genre have flinched from going all out, unwilling to bury the “logic metre” and preferring to retain a semblance of realism. Malayalam cinema's larger-than-life narratives picked up momentum with Shaji Kailas’ 2000 blockbuster, Narasimham, featuring a moustache-twirling, punchline-spewing, alpha-male hero who trounced a dozen baddies and remained unbeatable at his game. But even those stories were locally flavoured and had dramatic backstories though they followed a formulaic good versus evil template. So, while Induchoodan (Mohanlal) is glorified as a half-man, half-lion, he has been a victim in the past (an IAS aspirant convicted for a murder he didn’t commit), along with having to deal with a toxic parent. That in a way moves the audience to root for him.

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Narasimham also set the precedent for a slew of similar potboiler-superstar narratives. Some worked; quite a few fell flat. All of this corresponded with an overall creative bankruptcy in Malayalam cinema. Interestingly it was when the genre had stagnated that Vysakh entered the marquee with Pokkiri Raja.

Pokkiri Raja (2010; Hindi dub available to stream here) follows a typical masala entertainer prototype. At the core of this comedy-action narrative is a Manmohan Desai-esque template. The eldest of two brothers is banished by their father due to an unfortunate misunderstanding. He shifts to Madurai, while the younger one grows into a savvy, hot-headed young man (Prithviraj Sukumaran) who lands in jail for romancing the city commissioner’s daughter. The scene is ripe for the return of the exiled son, who has turned into a small-time don in Madurai. Perhaps Vysakh’s novelty was in how he sets up that otherwise tear-jerker of a reunion of the brothers. For one, the elder brother (Mammootty) is designed as a funny, chivalrous and loud don, dressed in white, with flashy gold jewellery and a handlebar moustache. Add his hilarious pow-wow with the English language and you get a hysterical sequence. Leave aside this freakish don and you have the expected good versus evil narrative with a staple one-dimensional villain and a heroine for a prop, peppered with gravity-defying stunts and the usual song and dance. The film turned out to be the highest box-office grosser of that year. For writers Udayakrishna and Sibi K Thomas, who had previously scripted a load of madcap (read: regressive) entertainers, Pokkiri Raja was a cakewalk, especially the low-brow humour.

Soon after the success of his first film, Vysakh concentrated largely on comedy dramas/thrillers. Seniors (streaming on manoramaMAX until July 2024) written by Sachi-Sethu has four middle-aged men going back to their alma mater. It typically begins as a comic caper, and suddenly segues into a murder mystery. Meanwhile, Mallu Singh had an absurd theme and a storyline that unfolded against the backdrop of Punjab. When the hero goes missing, his friend leaves their village and embarks on a wild goose chase that takes him to Punjab. The setting and casting were so farcical that no one watching it had any doubts regarding the falsity of the characters or milieu. It had Malayali actors slipping into Punjabi costumes, speaking chaste Malayalam, and breaking into bhangra. Then came Sound Thoma, in which a protagonist with a cleft lip pits his wits against the unfairness of life. It turned out to be middling fare, with several hackneyed characters thrown in.

Cut to 2016. Pulimurugan hit the screens, and became Malayalam cinema’s first 100-crore film. It also revived Vysakh’s marketability at the box office. Written by Udayakrishna (in his first solo outing), the film was set in a village in central Kerala and centred on a hunter who is something of a local legend for ambushing man-eating tigers. What worked in Pulimurugan’s favour — despite tasteless comic interludes, the absence of a strong antagonist and stronger punchlines — had to do with how the film celebrated Mohanlal’s star power as well as his agility in action sequences (well-staged spectacles all). Unlike the flamboyant and roguish Induchoodan in Narasimham, when he isn’t battling with the beasts, Murugan is goofy and meek before his temperamental wife. Like Induchoodan though, Murugan too is a character exalted… from being equated with God, to being positioned as the nemesis of tigers. Women are simply meant to propel the masculinity of Murugan.

Two years after Pulimurugan, Vysakh helmed Madhura Raja, an underwhelming sequel to Pokkiri Raja, that had Raja revisiting his village minus his brother, to ensnare their adversaries. Though the sequel seemed to have lofty ambitions and bit off more than it could chew, eventually Raja, his staggering screen presence, and comic timing, redeem the film to some extent. Udayakrishna, as always, ensures that the women in this narrative are one-dimensional.

Vysakh then opted for a new writer (Abhilash Pillai) and came up with a middling crime thriller: Night Drive. Everything goes wrong for a young couple out for a casual midnight drive. It is passable fare, just that Vysakh overestimated the charisma of his leading man Roshan Mathew. But it is Monster, released in the same year, that is undoubtedly Vysakh’s vilest endeavour to date. The minute Mohanlal enters the frame with his turban, mangled Punjabi, and grating enthusiasm, a familiar dread creeps up. The anxiety keeps escalating as the actor gets down to the business of being Lucky Singh, a Malayali-Punjabi businessman, hamming it up with double-entendre dialogues. Considering the genre, one cannot expect subtlety or nuance in storytelling or characters.

Though Turbo plays by the rules, it still stays away from some of the usual tropes. All said and done, Vysakh's filmography reinstates that escapist cinema is his home turf. As long as he adds a star and a smart writer, he is good to break those box office records.

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