Somewhere in the hidden corners of Yash’s Toxic is the story of a man who doesn’t fear death — not out of conceit, but out of resentment over life itself.
“When life seems more cruel than death, why should I fear death?” wonders Raya (Yash). Geetu Mohandas’s first try at noir follows the life of a complicated gangster. The said complication is profuse not just in his life — he is a Kannadiga gangster who has to navigate a steely Portuguese mob in 1947 Goa along with his sister (Nayanthara). Complexity is also found in abundance in his psyche. Having known betrayal from a young age, this is a gangster who moves through the world with a careless abandon. But deep within, he’s a gangster who wears his remorse like armour, seethes with rage at his own injustices, and is disgusted by his own sense of entitlement towards the women around him. This is perhaps the movie that Geetu Mohandas and Yash set out to make, but Toxic, which barely scratches this surface, falls painfully and frustratingly short.
The reason is pretty simple. It largely scrapes out the complicated man and instead quietly settles for a version of a gangster we’ve seen propped up in generic action set pieces and fan service in pretty much every gaudy crime thriller. Raya and Ganga (Yash and Nayanthara) are siblings who are bonded by blood and a kind of loyalty that can only be powered by childhood trauma. Together, they aim to rule Goa by reviving the opium trade in India. But, honestly, the film couldn’t be less bothered by the specifics. For all you know, it’s simply “generic gangster drama conflict,” and the film assumes we’ll fill in the blanks.
Before he can deal with heads of state and make his way up the Salvador cartel family, Raya has a few romances to attend to. It’s frustrating that Toxic joins the assembly line of films that treat its women as the chink in the men’s armour, but that’s essentially the story of Raya. Beautiful women fall for him — we’re not given anything except his gun-wielding persona as reason; he gets his heart broken and goes on to break the hearts of a few others. This is typically how these types of things go, and Toxic’s truth isn’t too far from this generic turn of events.
But this is also where the film gets one of its most interesting women in Nadia (Kiara Advani). She is both the face and brains of Goa's biggest circus company; she flaps around water like a mermaid, glides through aerial hoops, and despite her best efforts, falls in love with a man who is engaged to be married.
Advani taps into deep angst as she falls for a man she knows will disappoint her. The masks she wears for work slip for a second with Raya, but when she’s forced to put them back on, rage seeps out. While Raya sees most women as conquests — he snorts narcotics off women’s bodies and sets off a bomb while making love to another in the car, you know the gist — Nadia is the first he respects. She lands tight slaps when he steps over the line, occasionally questions his actions, and is given the agency to let him down as well... the first in Toxic’s bloodline to do so. Although their separation feels incredibly derivative, something we see coming a long way, Yash and Advani bring considerable passion into the cliché. But a lot of this intrigue almost immediately dissipates when the film hits the gas to get back on track to finish its gangster film prophecy.
With a run-time of nearly 180 minutes, Toxic sprints through characters and storylines by the minute. The editing is needlessly choppy, creating a restless, disjointed effect. There is no room for people to finish their lines, let alone for character development. So when there is no time, we make do with props. When someone is depressed, you can bet that they’re almost always seen with a bottle. Pipes and cigars stand in for emotions of deep indignation.
It’s largely frustrating because Toxic also shows us the route it could’ve actually taken. We see glimpses of the film it could’ve been in its final act. This is also where we see the capabilities of its headliner. The film runs on the charisma of Yash and his seamless ability to mouth the most ostentatious dialogues. But he’s also the most effective when he’s vulnerable. Mohandas makes best use of this fact towards the end of the film, where his past begins to haunt him. In his feral lookalike, Ticket (also played by Yash), he finally sees an opponent worth losing his marbles over, a threat to his throne. The timing of Ticket's entry, too, is an incredible detail — something that you might realise only after the credits roll.
Raya, in a surprisingly sharp moment in the second half, even has the perfect analogy for the situation: “A king might rule or rot. But he never retires.” The line is perhaps a summary of the film itself. Mohandas and Yash cover the reign in the first half, only to follow with Raya's spiralling in the second half. It's apparent that this is the Raya Toxic should have been based on. Maybe another time.