Kairam Vaashi reviews Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups, Geetu Mohandas's period gangster epic starring Yash, and finds a film that comes with the tagline of a fairy tale while in reality being a tragedy of childhood. Kairam calls it an intensely ambitious film and genuinely loves that about it — ambitious in its very core concept, since after the staggering success of the KGF films Yash could easily have taken the safer, more trodden route but instead chose a narrative that is psychological and deeply emotional at heart. Well within the commercial boundaries of a star vehicle, Toxic tries to explore revenge, guilt, parenting, troubled childhood and love with a degree of gravity. It is ambitious in its boldness too, with a thorough womaniser at its centre and enough sensuality to push envelopes, and ambitious in scale — a difficult film to shoot, occupying a very specific geography and period setting, punctuated by relentless action, with the money spent undeniably visible on screen. Yash plays Raya, a gangster rotting from within and willing to rot till death, though a distinct Rocky Bhai hangover is evident; as Ticket, the actor in him is truly willing to get vulnerable and experiment, and the result is mostly a success.
But ambition alone doesn't always make the cut. In a three-hour-and-fourteen-minute film, Kairam finds eighty percent of the long first half to be style over substance — the opium network, the royale circus, the sharp suits and vintage cars enhance the visual value without serving the drama. Ganga (Nayanthara), Nadia (Kiara Advani) and Raya are all broken mirrors, and while Kairam appreciates the effort of building a narrative around these fractured psyches, the emotional beats feel too familiar, while Rebecca's track (Tara Sutaria) gets extended runtime with virtually no narrative returns. The inorganic switching between Kannada, English and Portuguese sticks out, and the dialogue often sounds like forced poetry, with scenes engineered backward to deliver a clever line. Yet amid the chaos there are tender human moments — a giant wheel's cabin becoming Raya's cradle, or Elizabeth (Huma Qureshi) noting how women bear the consequences of the actions of the men they love. The THR India Bottomline: Toxic is fundamentally about how trauma attracts trauma, and for all that it packs in about brothers and sisters, love and belonging, and parenting, the core emotion only scratches the surface and never quite cuts to the bone — no regrets watching it, no love for it either, but an absolute wish that it had been a significantly better film for Yash and the team. Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups is in cinemas now.
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