Rocky - A bloodbath of aesthetic gore

Rocky, directed by Arun Matheswaran, is the most delicate craft in the recent times of Tamil Cinema. No other cult classic can elevate the kind of violence in an aesthetic aspect. The film is bloodbath and lethal in all sense, whereas it is filled with dark tones and wide frames with the world of Rocky. The film starts with Rocky stepping out of prison after 17 years and searching for his lost sister, and the set old rivalry of a gangster, Manimaaran, is the story's logline. In the lead, Bharathi Raja and Vasanth Ravi make the film look authentic for its genre. Bharathi Raja as an antagonist, makes himself underplay the character, which seems to be essential and significant. He sets his age model and strikes down the emotions very well in a subtle manner with uttermost villianism. Bharathi Raja's Manimaaran character gives a dual perspective to the film where the character is portrayed through the most violent aspects throughout the film. Still, we can track a positive side of Manimaaran in a particular scene of conversation with his gang. Manimaaran is lethal, yet he conveys some fruitful side of his heart by stating that he strongly supports the Tamils of Lanka. Vasanth Ravi, on the other hand, gets huge with every scene. He handles most of the gory, violent scenes in his styles where the film demands lots of raw stunts, and Vasanth Ravi scores each of them with his modulation. Vasanth Ravi plays a rugged man and can place liver as garland. His watch mannerism and expression of silent emotions gradually elevates the scenes in their flow. He makes the scene flow with his natural expressions and reactions.

Arun Matheswaran contrasted the past flashback portions with the aspect of black & white color tone, and the present is showcased in normal color variances. The film leaves lots of detailing to particular scenes, and the foreshadowing of what happens in the climax can be heard in the front line when the movie starts - this way, a filmmaker with a minimal storyline, tries to crane his ambitious detailing and foreshadowing through the subject elements in the frames and characters. Arun Matheswaran uniquely specifies his filmmaking style that this film set violence in the first place. He crafted it to be very subtle and ordinary. Normalizing some of its elements made the film travel in a slow-burn manner, but the slow pace gives an essence to the story and its world. He keeps the characters in a world filled with violence, love, and hope. Arun Matheswaran uses lots of symbolic references in the film through the staging of particular sequences in the style of Ingmar Bergman. The screenplay was divided into four different chapters, which have their past and present stories and never cut the flow of the overall story structure.

Violence is aesthetic and essential for a cinema-like Rocky. In that way, the film handles a vast amount of violence with its wideness and gore in the first place. Notably, the placement of the title boosts the movie in an energetic way of presence. The original Rocky is reborn, which is metaphorically hinted at by flashing the title in the middle of the film and the peak of utmost violence expressed by the character. Violence is handled decently. As a filmmaker, he framed what to be shown and what not be shown. Violence in the film is outrageous but not overexposed, it is on the line, and more to the case, it worked out to be aesthetic. This film hits hard for a light-hearted audience, in the case if they don't consider violence in their bucket list, but for the audience who love to watch extreme violent genres receive Rocky and its world to its most complete form.

The four most essential departments which worked out well and exposed their full potential throughout the screen are the departments of editing, sound, cinematography, and music. Shreyas Krishna's Cinematography gives a flavour to this film, and the extensive shots lead the audience to a perspective of the world of Rocky. Each frame is built with its detailing and aesthetic lighting techniques - most of the stunts worked out very well and were authentic in their aspect. Cinematography is the strength of the film, and it can be seen throughout its frames and notably the sequence where the hero's face is darkened with the frame of low angle, which conveys a dark figurative of the character. The extreme wide shots help to travel in a wider aspect with the world of Rocky, and in the true sense, it shows how long the character travels back and forth in time within his past and present crisis. Sound design is the crucial element to the film, and it is a phenomenon that helps elevate the violence on the scene. Most of the violence is not shown directly on the screen, yet, we tend to feel the cruelty of the hero dashing someone with a hammer in an edge, and in that case, sound design contributed a huge portion of its effort for the film. Music by Darbuka Siva is silently violent. He scores subtly and raises a scene to its peak in a unique approach of background scoring - a set that looks like Old Boyish kind of stunt action. Darbuka Siva added a classical touch to a gore of violence in the scene, which turned out to be a pleasant watch of enjoying extreme violence. Nagooran's cuts are the most intriguing element for the film as they are structured in a non-linear pattern. He perfectly fitted the scenes one by one in a sequence where nothing could be missed. Masterly editing work can be seen in the action stunts where the cuts give edge moments to the scenes.

The writing of every character is strong, yet few important characters lose their presence after some time in the film. The film's climax is a boom, yet it would have been in a different way (Maybe more dramatic). The world of Rocky is painful and lethal, and it is small yet very large in the perspective of an indignant angry man with a hammer. Rocky is something huge, and it is the best try for Tamil Cinema where it would be listed under the category of underrated or cult classic, and I would sit and think - "Nothing is underrated and of course a cult classic cannot be measured, it is born in its way of true cinema and not just for a cause of making films to entertain and flourish the money spent in it"

Rocky may not settle for all the audience, but it is impactful and aesthetic in every frame of its violence.