Leo. ലേശം വൈകി.
If I were to rank Lokesh Kanagaraj movies, Leo would be below Kaithi and above Vikram with Maanagaram leading the list. The first thing that I did after I was done watching the film, defying the age old sacred social media dictum – “thou shalt not seek logic in mass movies” – was to dare to Google if Hyenas were native to the Indian Subcontinent and the average life span of an eagle too, while I was at it. Posted a joke on Instagram about calling up my Biology teacher from school about Hyenas and Eagles and got schooled by a friend who shared some Wiki bytes of knowledge about the habitats of Hyenas and life span of eagles. Before you school me again, it was all in good fun. Now, I can totally enjoy a good “mass” movie with my brain on freeze, tbh almost orgasmed watching the likes of RDX and RRR though having said that, there’s indeed a thin line that separates a run of the mill Telugu or Tamil movie from a Padayappa or a Pokiri too. To put things in perspective, you were probably pretty pleased with the proceedings in Bahubali until Rajamouli decided that bending palm trees would be a good way to breach a fort, and yes it would look plain stupid if they showed that in a Marvel or DC movie too but you would be totally fine if it was the Looney Tunes show or the Kung Fu Hustle movie. I mean, some things just doesn’t fit. You’re not looking for logic here, either. And when it comes to Leo, it’s not the Hyena or the Eagle that I had an issue with, in fact the movie worked largely for me too.
Lokesh Kangaraj movies since Kaithi have demanded more than a fair share of suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer, I think. In Kaithi it was the premise that in this connected day and age, a gang of criminals could lay siege to the Commissioner’s office for a whole night, no less, but you didn’t mind because Dilli pushed all the right buttons on you the viewer [ though you probably felt that the gang wasn’t as motivated as they should be when it came to breaking down a few doors and windows – an “അയ്യോ ഭിത്തിക്ക് നോവും” kind of effort I mean. ] When it came to Vikram, the opening sequence where Karnan’s brutally “murdered”with a knife thrust deep into his chest was a letdown and everything else that happened after that didn’t really work for me. Lokesh with all his armory of skills as a director par excellence somehow manages to infuse some downright silly moments into his films, in Vikram it was those “blind spots” and the elaboration involved. Then the masked vigilantes crashing everything from weddings to gang meet ups. And streaming is a thing ever since Money Heist made it look cool, I guess. Personally I felt that the climactic showdown of Vikram had an eerie similarity to that of Nobody, the Bob Odenkirk action vehicle but the timelines are a bit hazy. Come to think of it, Leo is almost Nobody. In Master Lokesh went against type boldly when the hero couldn’t save those kids but then he had to go make Andrea do the archery thing in the middle of a car chase. Siddique got trolled for the night vision in prison bit but VSP punching walls and turning Mike Tyson of sorts not so much, just saying, again. Had to get that out of my system.
Circling back to Leo, I would say Lokesh has pulled off a Cinematic miracle in the second half where he compensates for non-existent writing with pace and craft. Lokesh comes across as a guy who thinks on his feet and if you have watched his interviews, he never pauses or falters or searches for an answer. He’s almost immediately ready with a detailed descriptive response even before the interviewer has finished the question. It’s probably this frantic thinking that goes into his process as a filmmaker who pulls off a film like Leo shot on location in a place like Kashmir against a deadline and still manages to deliver. For me Lokesh showed the tendency to slip into in his almost childlike indulgences of the silly kind for the first time in this movie when Leo asks his son to run home and grab his spear, in a moment of crisis. Then later on he switches from History of Violence to Home Alone in terms of inspiration or tribute, again at a crucial juncture in the plot(?). He might be building a Universe but doesn’t necessarily mean that every character has to have a weapon of choice like a GI Joe action figure. Gautham Menon appears with a tranquilizer gun here again, much like Andrea with the archery kit in Master. All of this is executed and presented in style but again it’s the palm-bend moment to the average viewer. Then you have the rescued animal turning rescuer. I can totally see where Lokesh is coming from, being a fan of 80s and 90s commercial films myself where dogs, horses and elephants did everything except speak lines in Tamil and Hindi movies back then. These absurd moments switch between some real grounded ones between the protagonist and his family too, almost
like it was conceived in different films entirely and then edited together. It’s ironic that as an audience we find the cause of the conflict between Leo and his kin hard to digest even though we have seen such extreme unfathomable acts by seemingly sensible and educated individuals in real life, driven by blind faith and superstition.
But then it’s again about fitting all of that into a storyline that belongs to a different genre altogether. Lokesh Kangaraj, if indeed intends to quit the industry after ten films, would probably want to slow down a bit and draw from his core strengths before he gets sucked into the eye of the tornado that LCU seems to be shaping into.
gopakumarpurushothaman 