Sometimes a film can be saved by a few late flourishes, even though it may have been going badly up until that point. However, that purported redemption arc in Deeno Dennis’s directorial debut Bazooka extends well beyond the point at which the majority of us would have lost interest in the characters or the story. After a bland main dish that left you feeling nauseous, it almost seemed like a dessert. It turns out that the dessert is the same old thing underneath the dressing on top.
There is rarely a scene in Bazooka without a background score. A significant portion of this soundtrack is devoted to highlighting the superstar’s every arbitrary movement in a movie prepared specifically for his admirers. A significant portion of the movie is set at a bus stop, where we first meet John Caesar (Mammootty) waiting for a bus while reading a self-help book. However, when we first see ACP Benjamin Joshua (Gautham Vasudev Menon) exiting his car to perform a standard vehicle inspection, he also receives the same treatment. In a movie that relies heavily on its aesthetics, this is hardly shocking.
It comes dressed up as a gaming thriller, for the simple reason that characters play games, including a person who plays it loudly inside a bus, much to the discomfort of the others. Caesar, a forensic specialist on the bus, is attempting to assist law enforcement in identifying a criminal mastermind who gives them hints prior to each theft. His endless, haphazardly written chats with his nosy neighbour (Hakkim Shah), who is also the loud gamer, make up a large portion of this narrative.
Interspersed with this are a few action sequences with a biker gang that does not have anything to do with the narrative other than make a show of the star’s action prowess. The things that some writers and filmmakers resort to in the name of “fan service” turn out to be a kind of disservice to the actor as well as his fans.
The police investigation is another joke altogether, especially the decoding of some of the clues. Certain sentences that seem to have been written solely as visual filler end up being inadvertently humorous. The ACP responds, “Let’s not glorify him,” to a police officer who suggests that the mastermind might be a psychopath. In which parallel universe is “psychopath” a name used for exaltation? Despite the background soundtracks’ signals to get enthusiastic, the screenplay is largely a meaningless jumble of happenings that fails to captivate us.
Despite being marketed as a “gaming thriller,” Bazooka is a bland movie with hardly any thrilling scenes that are worthy of the celebrity it is purporting to honour. At the moment, Bazooka is showing in theatres.
