“I was hoping to have a civilised conversation,” says Melissa (Rukmini Vasanth) to the naked glowering gangster. Raya (Yash) glances down deliberately, then looks up and says, “Do I look civilised to you?” She pulls open her dress to reveal a bomb strapped to her chest, says she wants revenge for her father, who was ruined by Raya’s casino. He sets off the timer and propositions her while she panics. At the last moment, he flings the explosive out the window. Next thing you know, she’s threatening his ‘regular’ and calling herself his ‘permanent’.
Toxic is thin as paper and empty like a broken promise. Not since Animal has a film tried this hard to get a rise out of the audience. But Sandeep Reddy Vanga at least knows his entire purpose is juvenile baiting. Try as she might, Geetu Mohandas doesn’t have that innate nastiness. The transgressions she offers are ridiculous but not shocking—a distinction the film itself makes when Nadia (Kiara Advani) tells Raya he’s not a bad guy, just toxic.
The film’s opening 15 minutes—Yash voiceover about bastards, Advani screaming “Woh mujhse nafrat karte hain” in the weirdest way possible, a shrugged-off suicide—is fair warning that this won’t be a tasteful or particularly sane 194 minutes. As Nadia’s young son, Ticket, lays eyes on his father, Raya, for the first time, the film loops back to Goa in 1947. A car pulls up to the funeral of a Portuguese gangster; a driver emerges and attaches something to the back. Unseen passengers inside start having sex so vigorously it pushes a lever that detonates dynamite placed among the mourners. Raya emerges with a Tommy gun and starts spraying the congregation. His sister, Ganga (Nayanthara), flies in on a motorcycle and joins the carnage. By the time the killing’s done, they're partners with Salvador (Darrell D'Silva), head of the Goa mafia.
There's one thing that differentiates Toxic from other large-canvas Indian action films in recent years. Raya has no real male rivals until well into the film—in fact, there are few male characters of any significance. But there’s a host of women. The most important person in Raya's life is Ganga, who brought him up after they were orphaned young. He marries Jessica (Tara Sutaria), Salvador’s daughter, and crosses paths with the steely Elizabeth (Huma Qureshi), the mobster’s mistress. Jessica makes way for trapeze artist Nadia, who makes way for Melissa. And, at the very root of his damaged psyche, the memory of his mother and her betrayal of his father.
This might sound subversive, a Dionysian hero in a macho action film surrounded by female characters. The problem is, none of the women (with the possible exception of Elizabeth) are prime movers. Raya happens to them, and they deal with the fallout. Toxic is really only interested in Yash. The perpetual drive to make him seem tough and cool is at the expense of his co-stars. They can’t win a scene, or even an exchange—Raya always has some smartass rejoinder. A scene where Nadia panics and tries to kill herself is trivialised by Raya saying, “You’re taking off your clothes, you’re slitting your wrists, where am I supposed to focus?”
Toxic has a 14-year-old’s idea of transgression. Raya says he’s “allergic to morality”; he cuts off a rival’s hand and deadpans “Handshake deal”. A group of nuns shed their habits to reveal assassins in tight-fitting costumes; Raya shoves a gun in one’s mouth as she kneels before him and blows her head off. There's always some new woman falling for him, but the only one he cares for is his sister. A young Ganga sold her body so her sibling wouldn’t go hungry; he grows up unable to see romantic relationships as non-transactional. She’s styled severely, is unattached and sad throughout, as if the makers were worried we might think Nayanthara and Yash make a nice pair.
It’s in the trailer, so I have no qualms saying Yash turns up in the second half as the grown-up Ticket. He’s even more of a psycho than his dad, gunning down some sort of jungle militia by way of introduction before setting out to take revenge on Raya. I enjoyed Yash’s Ticket considerably more than his Raya. The gangster is often amusing—especially when he has an English phrase to chew over—but too familiar. Ticket’s unhinged, energetic sadism is a change from the sarcastic antihero we already know Yash can play .
I was excited to see what J.J. Perry, a terrific veteran stuntperson and arranger, might bring to his first India outing as action director (there’s also the now-ubiquitous Anbariv). There are a couple of sequences in Toxic that bear his bruising, kinetic trademark: a searing set piece at the circus, a crunching Yash vs Yash brawl. Other ideas needed more finessing—the firefight in the snowstorm is beautiful but lacks spatial clarity, and the all-girl gang doesn’t get enough kicks in to count as serious opponents (the fight in Liger is better because Vijay Deverakonda gets pummeled).
After Raya has taken up with Jessica, we hear the barely disguised strains of Shigeru Umebayashi’s theme from Yumeji, more widely known as the yearning waltz that plays in Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love. I had to laugh. Who is this for? Do Yash and Mohandas think Toxic is a stealth love story? It’s a strikingly ugly film, lurid-looking and choppy. It’s entirely uninterested in mid-20th century Goa and Macau. There’s a real dearth of ideas and one of the most ridiculous late twists I’ve ever encountered. “Release me from this painful existence,” Raya finally begs. You and me both, brother.
‘Toxic’ is in theatres.
For more culture coverage, visit Livemint.com/mint-lounge.