Anupama Chopra reviews Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups and writes that every once in a while, through its three hours and fourteen minutes, you get a glimpse of what the film could have been — a bruising, brilliant dance of damaged souls, with women papering over gaping wounds with slinky outfits and smooth moves, men hiding their vulnerability with slow-motion posturing and phallic weapons, and children caught heartbreaking in the crossfire. Director Geetu Mohandas, whose last film was the emotionally searing Moothon, had the blazing talent and narrative beats to create something memorable, as did her hero, co-producer and co-writer Yash, coming off K.G.F: Chapter 2. This marriage of art house instincts and commercial savvy should have yielded something magical, Anupama writes, but Toxic is mostly a fascinating mess — fascinating because there is ambition, sweat and audacity here, and big props to Yash for enabling Geetu and taking such a big swing. Unfortunately, it just doesn't land.
The period gangster film, set mostly in Goa between the 1940s and 1970s, is sickeningly brutal, and through much of the first half the orgy of blood is connected to sex. Anupama notes that the emotional tracks — Raya and his elder sister Ganga, and Raya and Nadia — are what breathe life into the film. Kiara leans into Nadia's unhinged energy with a morbid melancholy, Nayanthara is quietly fierce, Huma Qureshi finds the requisite flamboyance as Elizabeth, and the surprise is Tara Sutaria as Rebecca, giving a glimpse of a woman undone by love; only Rukmini Vasanth gets a raw deal, reduced to Raya's sidekick. But the film insists on underlining Yash's swagger to the point of boredom, and post-interval the violence sidelines the emotional track until the rich themes of generational trauma and the redemptive power of love aren't allowed to emerge. It is heartening that the hyper-masculine hero doesn't get away with it, and Yash shows that beyond the industrial-strength aura he is also an actor, very good as the older, embattled Raya and as his livewire son Ticket. The THR Bottomline: Toxic is a story undone by the telling, with Geetu's gift for subversive storytelling and tenderness in grime drowning in scale and style, and it broke Anupama's heart because it's such a massive opportunity lost. You can see the film at a theatre near you.
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