Maargan Movie Review: Surprises outweigh flaws in this smart thriller

Debutant Leo John Paul, with the help of a tailor-made star cast led by Vijay Antony, has managed to deliver a taut and clever thriller with negligible flaws

Maargan doesn't get an exactly great start. A tippler cop, Dhruv (Vijay Antony), who had applied for resignation in Mumbai, rushes to the Commissioner's Office to rethink his decision. He wants to come to Chennai, and reinvestigate a cold case that has become active. Of course, as the mercurial cop, he also threatens the present Investigation Officer (IO). He starts the 'unofficial' investigation, albeit with a junior cop Sruthi (Brigida) and constable (Mahanadhi Shankar), and yet, no one bats an eyelid. Why? Well, we don't have time to get to these nuances.

Off to such a shaky start, debut director Leo John Paul's Maargan gains momentum as we keep getting regular surprises. Most importantly, these aren't surprises that we predict beforehand.

The film begins with Dhruv and his team safeguarding the next potential victim of the serial killer. The scene shifts to how it all began, and how a depressed policeman (Dhruv) springs back to action to investigate a case in which his daughter was one of the victims. He manages to quickly make some shocking revelations only to realise he has hit a roadblock. How Dhruv manages to carve a path out of this roadblock forms the crux of Maargan.

Points to Leo for giving a fresh twist to what could have been just another milieu where the cop hunts down a killer. Throwing a psychic person into the proceedings makes this regular cop procedural look complex and interesting. The editor-director has brilliantly married the real-life story of an American psychic to the Siddha tradition to localise this high-concept thriller. Credits for not making supernatural aspects such as Sthula Udal (physical body), Sootchuma Udal (spiritual body) and out-of-body experience (OBE) feel like a stretch. Also, these elements are well-placed within the framework of this film.

Director: Leo John Paul

Cast: Vijay Antony, Ajay Dhishan, Brigida Saga, Archana, Seshvitha Raju

The film gains with the editor turning into a director, as there are no dull moments throughout the run time. The writing is clean and so is the non-linear narration. There are multiple flashback portions in the film that are smoothly interspersed with the present happenings. Not just the placing of the flashbacks; the very way it was conceived was subtle and the director has resisted giving in to melodrama. The duration of such portions was compact and informative, just enough for us to follow the current occurrences without sapping our attention from the central plot.

What also works in favour of the film is the director's perfect understanding of a red herring. Maargan earnestly flirts with the idea of having multiple theories on how and why the murders could have taken place without having red herrings that can be seen from a mile away. Apart from the supernatural elements, the film also convinces us of various aspects of Maargan, including Dhruv surviving the poisonous substance, which blackens and numbs someone before eventually killing them.

The characterisation is hit-and-miss in Maargan. However, the presence of a weak character in the film is not a result of convenient writing. Going with the positives first, debutant Ajay Dhishan has done a brilliant job of carrying the complex Thamizharivu. His character is a vital lynchpin that connects the past and the present to crack the case. His expressions suit the antagonism, and he cracks the character of someone who is misjudged and yet dangerous. Mahanadhi Shankar's constable role delivered the occasional laugh whenever the narration got too tight. Archana and Brigida played their parts quite convincingly.

While psychic ability and ESP are useful and amusing cinematic tools for storytelling, they tend to become a crutch for Vijay Antony's Dhruv. Despite the abilities not being absolute, they have certain limitations and requirements; we don't quite know what kind of person Dhruv is. The psychic ability is only a happy discovery that makes Dhruv's job easier. If not for that, how else would he have solved it? What are his tangible abilities and traits? The film is shockingly silent on it. Despite the limitations of the psychic abilities ensuring it isn't a sinecure for Dhruv to zero in on the suspect, this supernatural felicity weakens the person. However, Vijay Antony delivers what is expected of him to play this role.

The film, like others that deal with serial killers, is faced with a moral dilemma. Maargan's proverbial devil and the deep sea are either dehumanising the antagonist completely or giving a moving backstory to the antagonist, whose death doesn't necessarily call for a celebration. The film goes with the latter. Not that Dhruv taking a moment to empathise with the killer, who goes through an inordinate amount of physical and mental pain, comes off as a balancing act. Even otherwise, this moral dilemma wouldn't outweigh the interesting ideas the film offered.

Maargan, in a nutshell, is a standout among cop procedurals of recent times. Debutant Leo John Paul, with the help of a tailor-made star cast led by Vijay Antony, has managed to deliver a taut and clever thriller with negligible flaws.