Unni Mukundan: ‘Marco is a dedication to all the action heroes, especially…’
Unni Mukundan had a certain vision about how he wanted to establish himself as an action hero. Michael's director Haneef Adeni understood the assignment and that's how Marco came to be.
Jan 14, 2025
Unni Mukundan in Marco.
Marco, according to its leading man Unni Mukundan, was a calculated move he made to break away from the family entertainer genre he was more often associated with and establish him as an action hero. He was also clear that he did not want this shift to happen with a routine action film; he’d have to bring something new to the table. For this, he knew he’d need a certain canvas, a look and feel, and a team that could see his vision and bring it to life.
Unni Mukundan says Marco will not work on OTT: ‘I’m going to…’
Unni Mukundan: Malayalam superstar Jayan left a mark on me
The Michael director Haneef Adeni, says Unni, understood the assignment. “I told Haneef that the day Marco releases, it would be my dedication to all action heroes who have come onscreen, especially the late Malayalam superstar Jayan. He died while performing a stunt without a body double and that left a mark on me. If I don’t do something of that nature, I am not really an action hero. I don’t think I will be allowed to do something as crazy as what Jayan did,” the actor said in a conversation with Anmol Jamwal.
While on the topic of the late Jayan, Unni states emphatically that he’s not trying to compare his feat with that of the former, but wants to highlight that he comes from an industry where heroes have done stuff that one can’t even think of. “There are times when Malayalam was only considered for bringing out a certain kind of good cinema. I believe my team, or the industry in general, can potentially deliver all kinds of cinema. I don’t like being put in a bracket as people capable of only a kind of cinema. I want to tell that we are capable of doing all kinds, which includes high-end action. Marco is only a 30 cr movie; within the resources we had, we pulled out a banger,” he states.
The actor’s physical transformation for the film was about looking good in a suit, while also being agile and quick enough to duck a bullet. If it were up to him, Unni says that he would not have done the bare-chested shot of him with a machine gun; he’d have stuck to the three-piece outfit.
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