OTTplay Reviews Kaala, Mark Antony, & A Haunting In Venice

A Haunting In Venice: A Deathly Dull Ode To Classic Detective Fiction

This is #CineFile, where our critic Rahul Desai goes beyond the obvious takes, to dissect movies and shows that are in the news.

Dir: Kenneth Branagh

Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Tina Fey

Playing in: Theatres

MY civilian hat is off to the dichotomy of Kenneth Branagh, a fine actor but a singularly inert film-maker who has somehow adapted Agatha Christie into the very grave she turns in. Branagh’s renditions of her famous character Hercule Poirot — the mustached Belgian detective who behaves like a Scooby-Doo-esque hybrid of Inspector Closeau, Sherlock Holmes and Benoit Blanc — have been spectacularly dull and unimaginative. A Haunting in Venice is the third Poirot slog after the clammy Murder on the Orient Express and the virginal Death on the Nile.

ALSO READ: Murder On The Reorient Express

There is not a moment of intrigue to be had. There is not an autopilot performance to appreciate. There is not a spark of cinematic originality. Every time we expect the literary murder mystery to dissipate into the slow-burning horror film it threatens to, the movie stays stubbornly arrow-straight. The novelty is supposed to be that this is traditional film-making, a throwback to a time when tech wizardry and manic visual effects and sound whataboutery were yet to dilute the genre. But to those who wistfully claim “they don’t make ‘em like these anymore,” I say “for good reason”.

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Kaala: An Unwatchable Tale Of Revenge And Redemption

IN a normal world, a work of fiction would be distinguished as good or bad. But there is another kind, hidden in the far right corner of both. You know it when you see it. Early symptoms on encountering this sub-category are nausea, eye pain and existential crisis. It manifests in making you question everything and staring into the dark abyss that is called life. This kind has a name: unwatchable. There are several contenders for this in this year’s Hindi-language streaming space. But we might have found a winner in Bejoy Nambiar’s new series Kaala.

There are not many ways to describe Kaala except calling it unwatchable. Everything I write from hereon would be an attempt to say this in different ways. It would be to ward off someone, anyone, from this creation which is a narrative mess of dastardly proportions. It would be a way of channelling my angst in a healthier manner rather than breaking down thinking that almost seven hours of my life were spent watching something that should not have existed in the first place.

— ISHITA SENGUPTA

Read the review here.
Stream on: Disney+ Hotstar

Mark Antony: Contender For Worst Tamil Film Of 2023

WHAT to make of Adhik Ravichandran’s Mark Antony? Starring Vishal and SJ Suryah in double roles, it is a time travel film in two modes — the actual sci-fi aspect of it doesn’t involve any travel. An invention by a comically transformed Selvaraghavan is a telephone that allows people to make a phone call to someone in the past. They can choose a date, make the call, and talk to the past version of anyone on that date. There are some rules to it like how you levitate during your first-ever call and other things that don’t really matter but that’s the gist. The part that actually involves travel is for the audience. We go on a not so merry, loud ride to the mid-90s and mid-70s, the two time periods that rule the story.

It’s not a head scratcher: Vishal and SJ Suryah are gangster friends and fathers in the mid 70s, and a good mechanic and a spoiled brat of a son in the mid-90s respectively. The time travel and the “mechanic” are bound to throw us back to the “watch mechanic” of another, much better-made Tamil film — Vikram Kumar’s 24 starring Suriya.

— ADITYA SHRIKRISHNA

Read the review here.
Playing in: Theatres

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