Trust the South Indian film industry to give an unimaginably spicy spin to every possible genre, and they will never disappoint! The concept of “time travel” should probably be considered a dinosaur, but has it ever been done in the way Adhik Ravichandran’s latest film did it? Mark Antony is understandably a rage among people right now, and you are bound to have some questions about the plot of the movie and its unexpected ending after watching it. If that’s the case, then this is going to be just the right article for you. Let us get into it without further ado.
Spoilers Ahead
Who Is Chiranjeevi?
Without Chiranjeevi, the scientist, Mark Antony wouldn’t have happened. The mad genius has been trying to make a telephonic device through which you can call the past. His obsession has cost him everything. His wife, Janki, had lost a leg in an accident and now lives the sorrowful life of a bitter person. But in the year 1975, Chiranjeevi gets another crack at fixing his life. He finally invents “The Phone,” and guess what the first thing he does with it? Calling his past self and saving his wife from the freak accident.
Chiranjeevi soon comes up with a set of rules for “The Phone.” The primary one among those is that a person can call another person or number only once a day. I am not entirely sure what the logic behind that is; other than that it becomes a pivotal thing in the entire narrative. Anyway, to celebrate his success, Chiranjeevi visits a local bar. Unfortunately, he gets caught in the crossfire between gangster duo Antony and Jackie and their fierce rival, Ekambaram. Antony dies at the hands of Ekam, who flees the scene, while Chiranjeevi suffers a bullet wound. As his condition keeps deteriorating, he makes several attempts at saving himself by using “The Phone.” Sadly, he fails, as none of his attempts turn out to be successful.
Meet Mark Antony, The Mild-mannered Car Mechanic
The year is 1995, and Mark Antony, son of the late Gangster Antony, is a humble car mechanic who runs his own garage. Despite his father dying in his childhood, Mark never had a lack of a father figure in his life, as Jackie has brought him up as his own. Over the past two decades, Jackie Pandian has become this legendary gangster who calls himself “Godfather,” but he still hasn’t managed to take revenge on Ekam, who is in hiding. Jackie’s son and Mark’s best friend, Madan, is an aspiring gangster who can’t wait to sit on his father’s throne. Madan, who looks exactly like Jackie and Mark, who looks exactly like late father Antony, are both in love with this girl, Ramya, but they acknowledge it instead of being bitter toward each other. Ramya only loves Mark, though, and once Jackie intervenes and orders Madan to treat Ramya as his sister-in-law only, Madan backs down.
Despite being around someone like Jackie, Mark has no intention of getting into the business of guns and blood. In fact, he hates his dead father for the life he chose to have. Mark has another valid reason for hating his father, though, which is that Antony killed Mark’s mother, Vedha, in cold blood over a disagreement. Mark has the horrid memory of listening to the whole thing over the telephone while in boarding school. Naturally, when Jackie finally manages to catch Ekambaram, Mark has no intention of taking revenge whatsoever. But despite what Mark thinks, Jackie can’t let it go. He must avenge his best friend’s death after all. So he literally blasts Ekam with a rocket launcher.
Unfortunately for Mark, this lands him into trouble as Ramya’s parents, to whom he was lying about being the son of an army officer, witness the whole thing unfolding from afar and get cold feet. They don’t want to give their daughter’s hand to Mark anymore, and they also want their own car back from the garage. And what car is that? The one that Chiranjeevi was driving back in 1975, and most importantly, the one that has the all-important suitcase, inside which lies “The Phone.” How is Chiranjeevi coming into the equation all of a sudden? Well, he happens to be the dead uncle of Ramya.
What does Mark do with “The Phone”?
It takes a while for Mark to figure out that “The Phone” he has just found is not any usual telephone. When he finally realizes what it does, he tries to call his father, Antony, in the past, for a confrontation. After getting through a lot of people, he finally reaches a hospital, but the man who speaks with him is not his father. Because Anthony, along with Jackie, is busy in a gunfight with Ekam at the same moment. Mark overheard the fight, and when he finally gets to speak with his dead father, Antony thinks he is Ekam and threatens to kill him.
Remembering the exact day when Ekam set fire to their family home, leaving the house in ashes, and Antony sending Mark to boarding school, Mark calls his own self and mother and helps them thwart Ekam. He tries to convince his mother to live with his father, which irks Vedha, and she disconnects the call. Frustrated at his numerous attempts at handling his father, Mark decides to find out the details about Antony and how his father became the feared gangster. After getting through a lot of research, he finds out about an advocate called Selvam, who used to be the go-to lawyer for both Antony and Jackie back in the day. Mark calls Selvam from “The Phone” and helps the advocate cheat his inevitable death. Remembering what Mark did for him in the past, Selvam arrives to meet Mark, as he was requested to. Now an old, frail man, the advocate is stunned to see Mark, who reminds him of Antony. From Selvam, Mark finally gets to know the real story of his father.
Was Antony A Good Man?
Antony was a gangster, but more of the Robin Hood kind. He wrecked the rich and helped the poor. And the man always used to respect women so much that he actually took it upon himself to stop a lot of women’s trafficking. The good used to love him, and the evil feared him. The man never kneeled before anyone, except one time, when Ekambaram kidnapped his beloved wife, Vedha, and held a knife to her throat. But Lord Karuppa Swami had other plans for the day. The only way Antony breaking all the iron shackles, taking care of hundreds of Ekam’s men, and freeing his wife could be explained was by believing the deity himself possessed the man on that day. And who are we to question that in a story like this?
After hearing all this from Selvam, Mark immediately wants to save his father from getting killed. It’s crazy how he randomly forgot Antony did kill his mother, but we can pass that off as a lack of judgment in a moment of excitement. It doesn’t matter anyway, as Antony didn’t kill Vedha. Then who did? Well, who else but our in-house “Godfather,” Jackie Pandian?
How Does Mark Change Both The Past And The Present?
I bet most of you saw the Jackie twist coming, but does it rob the movie of anything? Absolutely not. So Jackie conveniently arrives at Mark’s garage and gets utterly shocked by seeing Selvam, a man he killed years ago. When Mark asks Jackie to use “The Phone” and save Antony in the past, Jackie shows his true colors and does a lot of theatrics. I admit that I was a bit surprised to see Jackie putting his name on every possible sin, including killing Ekam’s brother and making him believe it was Antony who did it, which is what originally started the beef. But it was much needed at this point in the narrative. Jackie soon kills poor Selvam and starts to beat Mark with a rod. Before his death, though, Selvam managed to call Antony in the past and warn him about Ekambaram’s plot to kill him in the club. But Antony, being Antony, refused to listen and went to the club anyway.
Thanks to Selvam’s warning, Antony does manage to have a talk with Ekambaram. Being a pretty smart man, he also figures out that his best friend is actually the person who wants to kill him. After that, It was only a matter of time for Antony to bring Jackie down. Just when he is about to kill Jackie, he receives a call from the 1995 Jackie, who threatens to kill his son Mark if he kills Jackie. But you don’t get to mess with Antony in this story. So Antony first shoots off all of Jackie’s fingers, which instantly changes the fate of Jackie of 1995, who now can’t fire a gun. Then, he simply eliminates Jackie by firing a hail of bullets at the vermin of a man.
As you would expect, the entire course of the story takes a very different turn now. Mark wakes up and realizes he is a feared gangster. Ekam is his trusted ally. In a manner of classic reversal of roles, Madan is now the mechanic who, along with his trans uncle Gouri, continuously plots to kill Mark. He appears all toothless and down-on-luck to Mark and Ekam, though. Mark also finds out that in this “fixed” timeline, Ramya is in love with Madan instead of him. Another thing that bothers him is Antony’s absence from the scene. Where is his father? He wonders. We find out soon, though, as we see Ekam calling a cooler, black sunglass-wearing Selvam to enquire about “The Chief,” as Mark has been behaving strangely for the past two days. Confused and frustrated, Mark visits Ramya’s house to get “The Phone”. When he gets caught by Ramya with “The Phone,” he sees no other option but to demonstrate what it does to Ramya by making a scar from her childhood vanish. Seeing it from afar, Madan comes up with the idea of stealing “The Phone” and using it to change his fortune, which starts with his father killing Antony in the past.
Does Mark Manage To Save His Father?
In what I thought was one of the funniest arcs of Mark Antony, Madan keeps calling his father Jackie in the past and pleading with him to come up with a plan to kill Antony, and Jackie keeps failing at it. It was hilarious to see Jackie getting an earful from his own son in the future. Meanwhile, thanks to his gangster status in the ongoing timeline, Mark quickly discovers who has stolen “The Phone.”
Madan and Gouri are subdued, but they still keep gloating about how they have managed to change things, as Jackie is finally going to pull it off in the past, and Mark can’t do anything thanks to that “one call a day” rule. But fortune always tends to favor the brave, after all. The clock soon turns 12, and voila, it’s a new day! And Mark has all the opportunities in the world to save Antony from getting killed again. However, things get sort of tricky when Mark calls his place, but instead of Antony, it is Jackie who receives the call. Despite him screaming his heart out, Mark fails to convey the message to his father. Jackie rejoices in 1975, while Pandian and Gouri are finally ready to cut loose in 1995.
Life turns upside down for Mark as he wakes up again as a mechanic and finds out Ramya has been kidnapped—by none other than his old friend, Madan Pandian. It also happens to be the same day when the legendary gangster Jackie Pandian is finally getting out of jail for the murder of his best friend Antony back in 1975. Fresh out of jail, but with his silver hair and beard looking as neatly done as ever, Jackie is shocked to see his son still hasn’t killed Mark. To finish the job, the evil father-son duo calls up the mechanic to their den. Considering Ramya is captive, Mark goes there even though he knows perfectly well that he can’t save the day. He is further saddened to find out that, in this new timeline, Ramya doesn’t remember meeting him. Madan rubs salt on that wound by further taunting him.
Just when you have started to wonder whether this is a tragedy, as Jackie and Madan are about to kill Mark, the tables are turned! Did you really think someone like Jackie would have been able to kill someone like Antony after all that you’ve witnessed? Granted, Antony had a stroke of luck, as he just happened to listen to that phone call between Mark and Jackie from another telephone that he had upstairs. Handling the situation was a piece of cake, after all. But with a new government and police force emerging as a threat, Antony fled to Columbia and framed Jackie for his murder with the help of Ekam. However, with Jackie coming out of prison, it was a good time to return. And what a glorious return it turns out to be, just in the nick of time, to save his son, Mark, who is the reason he is alive. All that was left after this was bald, menacing-looking Antony wreaking havoc with his anaconda-shaped machine gun and then giving Jackie and Madan their due.
Seeing Mark willing to die for her, Ramya quickly declares that she has found a liking for him. It ends well, so all’s well? Not quite, because Antony still has one last thing to do. That happens to be saving Vedha from Jackie. So he uses “The Phone” and calls Vedha, but guess who plays spoilsport? Our good-ol scientist Chiranjeevi has got to know about his invention changing history without any of his involvement.
During Mark Antony‘s ending, Chiranjeevi holds Vedha at gunpoint and demands “The Phone” back from Antony. To make things further worse, Jackie holds Chiranjeevi at gunpoint as well. And we are done here. Unless the director wants us to interpret what can happen after this, a sequel looks very ideal at this point. With the film being a box office darling as well as a winner on the OTT platform, I see no reason for that to happen. Until then, let us just celebrate that Mark and Antony managed to save each other, justifying the title of the movie.
