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Star Cast: Yash, Nayanthara, Kiara Advani, Huma Qureshi, Rukmini Vasanth, Tara Sutaria, and Yash again!
Director: Geetu Mohandas
What’s Good: Yash in a double role, and a climax that saves the film!
What’s Bad: Bloated runtime, unnecessary first half, and underwritten heroines!
Loo Break: Only in the interval. The film never pauses to catch its own breath!
Watch or Not?: Only if you are a Yash fan!
Language: Kannada dubbed in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam
Available On: Theatrical release
Runtime: 3 hours 12 minutes
User Rating:
“Jab tak seh lo, tab tak reh lo” tells a brooding, yet filled with swagger Raya to a strong yet emotion filled Rukmini Vasanth, in one of the most important act change for Toxic, and this is where, the film actually changes its gear, to deliver a story that is equal parts classy and equal parts massy put together by Yash and Geetu Mohandas in a true-blue masala story that serves its purpose! How do you decide if a film has won its audience? Well, for me as a film critic, there is only one parameter – if the cheers, claps, whistles, and hoots in the theater are so loud that you cannot even listen to the dialogue. But then, is there a question about liking the film? Yes. because the hoots, the cheers and whistles all come for the progression maintained throughout – a sex scene, followed by Yash’s mother tongue in the film – violence! The universal language for rowdyness!
Written by Yash and Geetu Mohandas, the audience was promised a fairy tale for the grown-ups, and they got what they were promised! However, I agree that the film demands your patience and undivided attention to reach the climax that is one of the best plot twists of recent times! But yes, it takes a very long route to reach that class cinema delivered to the masses, and the masses do not want their equilibrium and balance to be shifted by then!
In one of the scenes, Yash asks Kiara Advani, “Am I a bad guy? And she replies, No, you are Toxic!” Now, I do not understand what you should expect from a film that defines itself in the title itself – Toxic! And so does it deliver the story of a narcissistic man, full of himself, so self-absorbed, that he does not bother about any woman in his life, a conclusion, his son derives in the climax – ‘Apne jeevan ki saari auraton ka jeevan kharab karke prachand itihaas likhe ho.’ Not exactly the same, probably, but something very similar!
Toxic Movie Review: Script Analysis
The story of Toxic is neither linear nor too easy to understand, and you have to be involved to understand it! But to cut a very long story short, Raya (Yash) and his sister Ganga (Nayanthara) have a troubled childhood, but they create their own world together with the help of some evil people in Goa. These evil people include Huma Qureshi, Akshay Oberoi, Tara Sutaria, and others! However, not very important to the story!
Now, Raya, in one of the gang wars of the drug lords of Goa, meets Nadia, a gymnast in a circus. They fall in love, and once a bad man falls in love and tries to find the good in himself, that’s where the story takes its massive turn, usually! This is where Toxic gets more toxic and obsessed with itself, and a lot of problems for the film arrive. Is Raya a good man? Does he turn a good man? Does he form a bond with his son? Whether Nadia and Raya’s love story literally turns into a fairy tale is all that gets answered in the second half and forms the crux of the story!
Toxic Movie Review: Star Performance
Toxic still works in parts mostly because of Yash, who is in career-best form here, as the father and son, both toxic men. As Raya, he is dangerous in stillness, where every raised eyebrow feels like a threat. As the son, he is a maniac, letting the anger turn messier. Yash uses body language and rhythm, not just VFX and makeup, to play the father and the son! It’s the kind of performance that reminds you why he became a pan-India phenomenon in the first place!
The women of Toxic are highly underused! Nayanthara, as Raya’s sister, controls the entire narrative, but there is nothing significant or mindblowing to her credit! Kiara Advani gets a role that promises intrigue in the first half and mostly delivers, even if the writing shortchanges her arc. Huma Qureshi is unpredictable in the little screen time, and it is not justified to keep her standing as one of the villains. If we are calling her so! People might be in awe of Kiara and Rukmini Vasanth, but it is Tara Sutaria who worked for me! However, unfortunately, all bear the brunt of the film’s structural problems! All are clearly meant to be pivotal, but all their arcs are overshadowed in Yash’s dual persona burden!
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Toxic Movie Review: Direction, Music
Four years is a long time to make an audience wait, especially when the last thing you gave them was Rocky Bhai setting an entire mountain of a franchise on fire. Yash knows this. Geetu Mohandas knows this. And Toxic, subtitled cheekily as A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups, knows this too. But does Geetu Mohandas wear that pressure? She builds a world that wants to have it all – the blood-soaked swagger of mass cinema and the brooding of a psychologically hit grey-shade man who does not know if he is a good man or bad man! Does the film manage the balancing act? Mostly no – at times it is massiest, and in the climax, it is the classiest, but in between, it gives a head spin, oscillating between the massy and the classy dilemma!
Toxic has a lot working in its favor – class cinematography, brilliant costumes, a brilliant set of actors, and Yash at his best as the villain in a double role! The film probably has just one problem – it does not have a hero! And a film cannot survive or breathe without a hero! It never has, and it never will! In the battle of good vs evil, it is the good that has to win, but Geetu Mohandas writes a very lousy act towards that win, if we are considering that climax as a win! Psychologically, it works on paper, but emotionally, it stumbles in creating the impact!
Geetu Mohandas keeps cutting away from the beats that Yash was expected to follow; she shifts gears with a heist here, a betrayal there, and a lot of sex and violence in between. A sex scene near a graveyard, not needed; a full-blown cheeky dialogue on morality, not needed; a woman trying to find a good man in a psychopath, not needed! A lot in the story was not needed, and if it had been edited properly, it could have been one of the best lullabies for adults!
Geetu Mohandas sets the film in 1947, then 1967, and then some time zone in Goa, but none of them are replicated in the film! You cannot figure out the timeline, the era! Ravi Basrur’s background music works like heaven for this film! It does the heavy lifting of stitching together the film’s tonal quality – brooding one moment, thunderous the next, and he succeeds in major parts! The soundtrack sounded better in audio, but it is mostly misplaced in the film! The individual tracks do not land hard in context!
Toxic Movie Review: The Last Word
The problem with Toxic is that it builds a world with too many characters, who are introduced with visual flourish but not enough narrative meat, and the chain of women who were actually not even needed!
The climax of Toxic is where this film headlines itself because it genuinely earns the most classy tag. Without spoiling specifics, the film saves its most important plot point, obviously for the end. It is staged with a confidence that was badly needed, and it could have a much bigger impact, if the first half was dealt with more awareness! The visuals in the climax are a show stealer, with Yash finally having his wings – bringing the fairy tale he promised! But I think, by this time, everyone was too exhausted to appreciate those wings! And it was too late for him to fly!
Toxic is not the clean, crowd-pleasing comeback some fans might have wanted from Yash after KGF: Chapter 2. But honestly, this is the maximum Yash has Yash-ed! It’s messier, moodier, and far more trippy. The only problem is that it is tricky for most of the parts of the masala story! Not spicy enough for a treat, and not bland enough to soothe the palette! But love it or argue with it, Toxic is impossible to ignore, and for a film this ambitious, that might be the whole point!
Geetu Mohandas and Yash mostly try to win the film that is scaled on a huge budget, but they only fail to decide to choose mood over mass or mass over mood!
3 stars!
Toxic Trailer
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