Double Barrel: An Absolute Madman Of A Film

Sitting down to write this review, I know that I will never be able to capture everything I want to say about Double Barrel. While I have seen this film so many times that I’ve lost count, I still notice something new with each viewing (in fact, when I sat down to go through the movie once before I wrote this, it amazed me how much I missed in my previous viewings). But mine is an exceptional case; Double Barrel was largely met with heavy criticism and it failed terribly at the box office. In fact, it is a movie so divisive that I almost got ostracized by my friends for saying I loved it (eventually most of them did come around).

Written and directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery in 2015, Double Barrel was a movie way ahead of its time. Wikipedia refers to it as a Malayalam gangster comedy movie, but to do so would be ignoring so many other aspects of the film. The plot is a huge web of interconnected stories and many interconnected characters, but the premise is simple – there are two precious gems, Laila and Majnu (colored yellow like fire and red like blood respectively), which are extremely valuable, but only when together. The movie follows the many characters who try to get their hands on it by cheating, lying and even murdering. There are also many subplots, the main one being that of two thugs, Majnu and Diesel, tasked with getting rid of the body of Laila. The sheer amount of characters involved in the many storylines is staggering – Vinci and Pancho, The Don and Sweety, Gabbar, Billy’s gang, Blacky’s gang, The Tarkov gang, The Boss, Silent and Kid, Majnu and Diesel, Laila and Uncle, He and She, just to name a few. Together, they form a rich tapestry that honestly took me many viewings to completely unravel.

In the title, I called this movie an Absolute Madman, and I meant it. Double Barrel is probably what you will get if you crossed all of Quentin Tarantino’s movies with all of Edgar Wright’s movies. It is the most stylistic film that I have ever seen in my entire life – from its music to its editing, its zooms, its transitions, its dialogue delivery, its settings to its wardrobe. And what a variety of styles it is too. However, for all its exaggerations, the movie is also amazingly subtle. Both main storylines deal with a Laila and a Majnu, and both pairs are associated with yellow and red – Laila mixes mango juice with her alcohol and Majnu is almost always high on the red crystal drug Kulsumbi. In addition, almost all the interior shots are lit with either red, yellow or a combination of the two. This keeps the viewer subconsciously aware of the stones even when they are not present onscreen – and this adds to the mythical status of Laila and Majnu. I love that the title credit sequence is an animation that traces the journey of these stones through history – featuring the pharaohs, Da Vinci and even Hitler – and yet the weirdest parts of the movie are yet to come.

It is easy to see that the actors are all having a lot of fun playing some of the goofiest characters in Malayalam cinema, and many of the scenes feel improvisational. Everything about the movie screams that it is not to be taken too seriously, and yet many seem to have missed the point. However, the final scene in the movie is a drastic tonal shift as Majnu finally parts with Laila’s ghost. Their exchange is a repetition of lines that can be found elsewhere in the movie, but in this scene, they feel quite eerie. “When the seas were dug, where did all that sand go? Some became the stars, and others, the eyes of fishes.”

The only bone I have to pick with the film is its bad CGI at places, but these shots are never too long. Otherwise I love its flair, its characters, its wild plot and its weird brand of humor, though that can take some getting used to. This movie is certainly not one that is loved by many, and the overwhelmingly negative reactions to it puts everyone else off from even giving it a chance. I know that this review is too bare bones to amount to anything, but I sincerely hope at least some people check out this gem of a movie.