Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-ups

Yash holds the film together, but the runtime pulls it apart

Yash delivers a fierce performance and the action impresses, but a weak screenplay and chaotic narrative hold the film back.

Toxic has impressive production values, striking visuals and a star-heavy cast, but the weak narrative structure, excessive violence, confusing conflicts and lack of convincing emotional depth prevent those strengths from coming together effectively.

TOXIC leans on style and swagger but lacks story and depth

Yash returns with an ambitious gangster drama centred almost entirely on his character Raya. However, strong performances, striking visuals and inventive action cannot overcome its tonal confusion and underwritten women.

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. Director Geetu Mohandas's film relies heavily on Yash's 'aura' and 'post-KGF glory', prioritising his swagger and action over narrative depth.

Overall, everything that could go wrong had gone wrong for the Toxic. Except for lavish filmmaking with some technically brilliant portions here and there, there is nothing for the audience to get engaged with. It tests your patience and makes you restless with its confused screenplay.

Toxic sees Yash return as gangster Raya in a visually striking but emotionally thin drama. The review criticises its loud background score, weak character depth, forced machismo, poor chemistry and spectacle-driven violence over substance.

Does the international scale style work? Lehren checks it out.

There's something about Geetu Mohandas and Yash's Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups that has rubbed people the wrong way since the first promo was released. Initially, it felt like the uproar was over the depiction of sex or the grand dose of misogyny that came with a side of gratuitous violence. In hindsight, it feels like maybe our gut instinct was telling us everything about the film was surface-level.

Barring those two motifs, it’s hard to tell, if anyone — let alone the other female and male actors in the movie with a cigarette in their hand, in every scene — has any clue what this movie is about. The side-effect of such nonsense can’t be strictly external. I notice, by the movie’s climax, the hero has, mentally, lost it as well. Good, why must we suffer alone.

It's a great pity then Mohandas' voice gets sanded under the crushing, loud antics of this blood-soaked saga around men, guns and guilt. However, Ujwal Kulkarni's scattershot, frenzied edit constantly drains both poignance and any sustained mood.

Toxic is a lavishly mounted but hollow action drama that mistakes style, violence and sensuality for substance. Yash's star power and the film's technical polish cannot compensate for its weak writing and illogical screenplay.

'Toxic' presents a house of mirrors that is largely out of service, failing to deliver a coherent or compelling narrative despite its ambitious premise of exploring a man who doesn't fear death.