Purely relying on Yash's aura to the point of draining him dry, Toxic doesn't have an smidgen of storytelling in its body rolling in sex, shock and sounds of bullets fired at anyone and everyone.
Key Points
- There are no fairies, godmothers, spells, myths and lore of adult or any kind to be found in this 190-plus minutes long stab at nothingness.
- Director Geetu Mohandas's film relies heavily on Yash's 'aura' and 'post-KGF glory', prioritising his swagger and action over narrative depth.
- Despite a strong cast including Kiara Advani and Nayanthara, their performances are hampered by 'wafer-thin writing' and 'caricatures'.
Toxic positions itself as 'A Fairy Tale for Grown Ups' but I don't know which part of that description fits this hack job spanning five decades.
Though the scene is bursting with all kinds of magical looking women, there are no fairies, godmothers, spells, myths and lore of adult or any kind to be found in this 190-plus minutes long stab at nothingness.
Purely relying on Yash's aura to the point of draining him dry, the spectacle doesn't have an smidgen of storytelling in its body rolling in sex, shock and sounds of bullets fired at anyone and everyone.
Filmmaking Flaws and Formulaic Approach
If Geetu Mohandas was looking to discard the tag of a woman director, her sordid approach reflects none of her filmmaking flair, which previously impressed in indie fare like Liar's Dice and Moothon.
Devoted to tom-tomming itself as a Yash special basking in the post-KGF glory build on grisly masculinity and blatant violence, Toxic's wild ambitions cannot conceal its comfort for formula. And the Kannada superstar is it.
Plots become the man every time his undeniable charisma is fired on screen for the sake of fans wanting no more than their favourite brandishing his swagger to the hilt.
Toxic is quick to tick off those boxes when armed with smoke, sunglasses, slow-motion and a background music playing to his strengths. Yash makes a badass entry to announce, 'Daddy's home!'
Here, there are two of him -- Yash, the bearded beast and Yash, the cleaned-up, de-aged, virtually unrecognisable lad.
Caught up in a flurry of generational trauma, sibling love, first love crisis, domestic distancing, guilty father syndrome and running a drug and crime empire that's led to a lifetime of enemies, Yash fills up the frames for better and worse.
Co-written by Yash and Mohandas, Toxic opens like pages of a dark comic book with a menacing voiceover and ominous foreshadowing in a circus about to go boom.
A woman's smudged eyeliner tells her tears are up to something sinister, a knee high joker anticipating a reunion that cannot be, an army of gangsters in leather trenchcoats whose intentions are never made clear.
There are some cool ideas in there -- about a fractured family, the toll of shame it has taken on a decayed mind, the endless cycle of violence -- but the execution is so flimsy, you never know what's going on.
Confusing Narrative, Character Portrayals
Set in a fantasy version of Goa, while the Portuguese still ruled it, Toxic's visual oddities resist realism like a plague.
It's a dark, dystopian reimagining, where one second you're in a Western-like town inhabited by people in a fancy dress ball but in the next scene, snow and mountains abound. The story moves to and fro between the '20s and '70s in search of a filial closure only to be distracted by provocative elements.
Rough, robust and ruthless Raya is determined to build his own legacy and climb up the Goan underbelly by striking a bargain with its phoren overlords. What he really does is light cigarettes, drown down drinks, fire bullets at whim and enjoy an orgy of semi-clad women he bumped into at circus and clubs.
Where Raya's debauched devil is hyped like the ultimate poster boy of machoism, women are fawning beings who first resist than fall for his brutish charms.
Of these, Kiara Advani is the most mesmerising. Be it as the circus acrobat dancing like a goldfish in a bowl or a crumbling picture of heartbreak, the actor infuses life in wafer-thin writing.
Nayanthara is reliably stoic as Raya's sister and the sole recipient of his respect.
Tara Sutaria is too feeble to convey the unhinged, insecure, suicidal tendencies of her entitled brat.
Rukmini Vasanth barely registers as Raya's arm candy in the second half.
Huma Qureshi's antagonised business associate harbouring revenge on Raya is a curious character that's cut short to accommodate Toxic's tedious ferocity and reckless rage.
Excessive Violence, Misleading Elements
Chopped limbs, decapitated heads, bullets fired through brains, Toxic's generic bloodshed gets tiresome after a while as does its so-called carnal pursuits.
Raya sleeps with half the cast but the scenes are seldom as erotic as the trailer would have you believe.
But the Hindi dub I watched evokes much cringe what with lines like, 'Kapde bhi utarti ho. Kalai bhi kaat ti ho. Focus kahan karen?'
Mohandas may have gone easy on the lust factor but her gaze is depressingly mocking towards its largely female cast that goes overboard to create caricatures and reinforce the 'girls like bad boys' cliche. At one point, Huma tells Nayanthara how women are women's biggest enemies and goes on to prove just that.
Toxic is full of misleading curveballs.
If the loopholes of what's real and what's imagined aren't outrageous enough in its profusion of CGI views and music video aesthetics, the screenplay regularly embarrasses with its context deficient imagination.
We never know who is Yash fighting. Not once.
A bunch of warrior women appear to attack him for no rhyme or reason.
A Christmas carnival cuts to a stand-off between monks and men in black against a campfire.
A father-son team up to fight back what looks like an army of spacesuit clad men in snow.
A ultra glam lady shows up lamenting about her father losses in the hero's casino only to undress and reveal a time bomb. I am not sure what any of this means.
I am all for commandoes and clowns showing up in snow-covered Goa but in the absence of edge, stupidity cannot pass off as wonder.
It's over when I say it's over, persists Raya. He speaks for an entire system stubbornly hellbent on giving larger-than-life platforms to wanton ideas of strength and show. Toxicity is here to stay even if it's true place is in the trash.
