Toxic Movie Review: What Went Wrong With Yash’s Film?
Before the KGF films, actor Yash was not very well known to the wider film industry. But after director Prashanth Neel’s KGF: Chapter 1 and KGF: Chapter 2, his name became a sensation across the country. With these two films alone, Yash gained a massive pan-India image. Naturally, when an actor who has achieved such a huge stature announces his next film, audiences expect him to be careful about the story and script he chooses. However, after watching Toxic, one cannot help but wonder how and why Yash agreed to do this film in the first place. The reason is simple: Toxic has virtually no story. If Toxic has to be described in just three words, they would be: a shower of bullets, a shower of alcohol, and a parade of heroines. There is hardly any clarity about why these characters enter the story or why they disappear.
After watching the film, audiences are bound to wonder why Yash gave Geetu Mohandas an opportunity to direct a film like this. Another strange aspect is that a film with virtually no story has been stretched to a whopping 3 hours and 14 minutes. Among the performances, apart from Yash, Nayanthara gets the most substantial role. Kiara Advani’s character is given an emotional angle, but even that does not work particularly well. The roles played by the other actresses — Rukmini Vasanth, Tara Sutaria and Huma Qureshi — remain fairly routine. Nayanthara plays Yash’s sister in the film. The story revolves around drug trafficking, something audiences have already seen in numerous films, and a battle between gangs trying to control key territories. However, everything is presented in such a confusing manner that there is hardly any clarity anywhere in the film.
Despite running for more than three hours, only four or five sequences featuring dialogues manage to make a slight impact. The rest of the film is largely boring. Although the movie has plenty of grandeur in terms of production values, the lack of an engaging story and screenplay makes it a tedious watch for the audience. Overall, it has to be said that director Geetu Mohandas has delivered a disastrous film for Yash, who has been riding high on a series of successful movies. As indicated by the trailer and the videos released earlier, Toxic also contains a heavy dose of excessive violence and sensual scenes.
