Mark Antony review: SJ Suryah makes this tricky time travel tale tick

The Tamil movie Mark Antony is now playing in cinemas across the UAE. It is directed by Adhik Ravichandran and stars Vishal, S J Suryah, Ritu Kumar, Sunil, and Selvaraghavan.

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How to watch Mark Antony in the UAE

Mark Antony is currently showing in cinemas across the UAE, such as VOX Cinema and Novo Cinemas. It will probably be a while before the film hits streaming services in the UAE.

Mark Antony review

Time travel is a favourite muse for filmmakers, both here and elsewhere. Some use this fantasy idea to make either sci-fi stories or emotional ones. The 2022 Telugu flick Oke Oka Jeevitham (Kanam in Tamil) is a good case where the simple idea of a time journey is used as a prop for a man to find emotional closure vis-a-vis his mother’s death. 

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In Adhik Ravichandran’s Mark Antony — the title is decidedly a doffing of the hat to one of Tamil film’s popular on-screen villain characters, Mark Antony, played by Raghuvaran in Baasha (1995) — the time travel is also used for the same purpose. But the larger story and its treatment are different. Oke Oka Jeevitham tugged at your heartstrings here Mark Antony goes for your funny bone and some youthful nerves. Adhik’s focus is fun, frolic and cheap thrills that the genre throws, and he milks it to the hilt, especially with the enjoyably over-the-top histrionics of SJ Suryah.

There is an element of cultivated hamminess in his performances. We saw that in films like Don (2022) and Manadu (2021), which was also incidentally a fantasy that involved travel within the vertices of time. It is not as if Suryah is not capable of other types of acting. The 2016 movie Iravai showed his gritty acting style. But it is as the rambunctious villain, with his penchant for theatrics, that Tamil fans seem to love him more. And in Mark Antony, in which he has a double role, he goes for the high notes. And it is mostly fun. In a sense, he is the one who make this tricky time travel tick, even though the film is meant as a comeback vehicle for Vishal, who too acquits himself in a masala trope that’s right up his alley.

The smartness of Adhik is in the essential tweak to time travel. It is more of a spoiler alert — time calling. Saying anything more would be revealing the core of the film’s conceit. Mark (Vishal), a quiet mechanic, is in love with Ramya (Ritu Kumar). But her mom doesn’t accept him as his son-in-law because his dad was a gangster (Antony, Vishal again). Mark’s friend is Marudhu ( SJ Suryah), the son of Jackie (SJ Suryah again). Mark is upset with his dad when he tries to find out about his family, especially about his mom’s demise.

As it happens, he chances upon scientist Chiranjeevi’s (Selvaraghvan) time travel device, a phone. So Mark uses it to set right past and settle scores with his dad. But in the process, he finds out more stirring truths about his family, which involves many Jackie.

As we said, Adhik has tailored it as a frolicsome piece; hence, logic is not its strong thread. But Suryah and Vishal make it fit, for the most part. Suryah has many scene-stealing moments, and he captures them with his usual panache. The man has a good screen presence, and his dialogue delivery — theatrical but effective in such roles — makes the multiple characters work. Vishal, too, after Irumbuthirai (2018), has a good role that he can sink his teeth into. The Telugu actor Sunil, who now seems a regular in Tamil, also plays a gangster. But he has nothing much to do. He was already seen in two other big hits of the season — Maaveeran and Jailer. The film has nothing major for women, and Ritu Kumar’s role can be written on the back of a postal stamp. Some dialogues and situations are from the typical male gaze and hence problematic. But in Adhik’s movie, that is par for the course.

All in all, Mark Antony, as they say in these parts, is a time-pass movie. 

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