Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups — Paradise Rotting From Within

Geethu Mohandas's long-gestating gangster saga finally arrived in theatres this week, and it announces itself less as escapist mass entertainment and more as a fever-dream deconstruction of the genre. The film is an ambitious, experimental gangster picture starring Yash that sets out to dismantle the invincible-gangster myth through a unique, character-driven narrative perspective, and while it is visually striking and daring, its unconventional storytelling and editing choices can feel disjointed and polarizing. Unlike the escapism of something like KGF, Toxic instead tries to unpack the gangster myth by filtering the story through one psychologically tormented character's point of view — a choice that will either fascinate or frustrate, depending on how much patience one brings to the theatre.

The setting itself does a lot of heavy lifting. Spanning Goa from the early 1940s through the 1970s, the film is a savage action-thriller that digs into the rot festering beneath a coastal paradise, following a man who forges his empire through blood, fear and betrayal in a world where power is seized rather than granted and always demands repayment. Structurally, the story follows Raya, who wants to rule Goa and finds support from his sister Ganga as they join a gang led by Salvador, whose daughter Rebecca falls for Raya — a fairly classical rise-and-fall gangster skeleton dressed up in period detail and an eye-watering scale of production.

Where critics diverge sharply is on execution. One camp finds real ambition beneath the chaos, praising a stylish film that takes its time establishing its world, gradually revealing connections between characters instead of front-loading exposition — an approach that works especially well in the first half, with an escalating second act delivering raw, high-energy spectacle best experienced in a theatre. The other camp is far less forgiving: by this account, the first half drags without much of interest on screen, mixing underwhelming action beats with dramatic scenes that fail to land emotionally, and while the pre-interval stretch briefly hooks the audience, the second half loses momentum again, leaving viewers wondering where it's all heading, with near-constant shouting across dramatic scenes becoming its own kind of fatigue. Notably, even the more skeptical reviews concede a compelling final act that reframes everything that came before it, suggesting the film's structural gamble does eventually pay some dividends, even if the road there is bumpy.

Behind the camera, the pedigree is hard to dismiss, with Rajeev Ravi's cinematography and a starry ensemble including Kiara Advani, Nayanthara, Huma Qureshi, Tara Sutaria and Rukmini Vasanth. The project's scale made headlines well before release, having been shot simultaneously in English and Kannada, an unusual and costly practice with only a handful of precedents in Indian cinema. That ambition also came with real-world friction: the production drew a formal notice from the Karnataka Forest Department over the alleged illegal felling of trees on forest land during the shoot, a controversy that shadowed the film long before it reached screens. Even industry veterans weighed in on Mohandas's boldness as a filmmaker, with Ram Gopal Varma publicly hailing her as pushing further into daring territory than most of her male peers.

Taken as a whole, Toxic is a film of extremes — a handsomely mounted, formally daring gangster epic that trades the genre's usual comforts for something messier and more confrontational, succeeding more as a mood and a final-act reveal than as a consistently gripping watch.

⭐ Xinemas Rating: 3/5

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