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There are bad films, there are misguided films, and then there are films that seem almost determined to test the limits of an audience’s endurance. Geetu Mohandas’s Toxic belongs firmly to the last category. What arrives with the promise of being a grand, pan-Indian action spectacle instead turns into an exhausting three-and-a-half-hour assault on patience—a film so desperately enamoured with its own supposed coolness that it forgets the one thing cinema actually needs: a story worth telling.
The most astonishing thing about Toxic is how little narrative coherence it possesses. The film does not so much unfold as lurch from one episode to another, with characters appearing, disappearing and reappearing without the screenplay ever bothering to establish who they are, what they want or why we should care. There is no satisfying dramatic architecture, no meaningful progression and barely any sense of cause and effect. Scenes seem to exist because someone thought they looked impressive, rather than because the story demanded them. Watching Toxic is less like following a narrative and more like being trapped inside somebody else’s extraordinarily expensive fever dream.
The filmmaking becomes even more bewildering when one notices how frequently the basic technical craft appears to have been sacrificed at the altar of spectacle. The lip-syncing can be distracting, the dubbing often feels jarring, and the overall presentation occasionally has the polish of something assembled in a hurry rather than a major cinematic event that presumably spent years in development. For a film operating on this scale, the disconnect between ambition and execution is frankly startling.
And then there are the women. Kiara Advani, Nayanthara, Huma Qureshi and Rukmini Vasanth are all capable performers, but Toxic seems to have absolutely no idea what to do with them. Their characters are thinly conceived, dramatically underwritten and frequently buried beneath bizarre, aggressively unflattering costumes. Instead of giving these actresses roles that could complement the film’s enormous scale, the screenplay reduces them to ornamental figures wandering around its narrative wasteland. There is neither convincing chemistry nor sufficient characterisation to make their presence feel consequential. It is a spectacular waste of talent.
If there is anything in Toxic that occasionally resembles genuine filmmaking, it is the visual design. The cinematography has a sleekness and a certain graphic confidence, and there are fleeting moments when the film looks exactly as grand as it believes itself to be. Unfortunately, even those strengths are repeatedly bludgeoned into submission by the film’s addiction to violence. Heads are severed, bodies are pulverised and blood is sprayed with such relentless frequency that brutality quickly loses whatever shock value it might initially possess. Violence can be powerful when it has dramatic purpose. Here, it often feels like visual wallpaper.
The background score compounds the punishment. Rather than elevating the action or giving the film an emotional pulse, the music frequently assaults the ears at a volume that seems designed to compensate for the absence of substance on screen. And for all the noise, there is remarkably little music that stays with you. Toxic wants to overwhelm the senses, but sensory overload is not the same thing as cinematic impact.
Then there is Yash, whose enormous star presence deserves a considerably better vehicle. His introduction is undeniably commanding, and for a brief moment Toxic appears to have found the swagger it has been promising. But almost immediately, the film falls headfirst into what can only be described as a severe KGF hangover. Slow motion becomes a substitute for character. Style becomes a substitute for momentum. A pose becomes a substitute for personality. Yash has charisma to burn, yet the film repeatedly photographs him as though charisma itself were enough to sustain a three-and-a-half-hour movie.
There are isolated sparks in the second half, including Yash’s dual-role performance, particularly his clean-shaven, slightly unhinged turn, as well as a few stylised action passages. For fleeting stretches, one can glimpse the film that Toxic might have been. But just when it seems capable of finding its footing, an absurd narrative turn sends the entire enterprise careening into further incoherence. By that point, the viewer is no longer asking what happens next. The viewer is simply wondering when it will end.
The greatest failure of Toxic is not that it is excessive. Excess can be exhilarating. Nor is it that it is violent, loud or visually flamboyant. Cinema has room for all of those things. The problem is that virtually none of these choices are anchored to compelling storytelling. The film mistakes scale for substance, noise for energy and spectacle for emotion. It keeps shouting at the audience because it has almost nothing meaningful to say.
Geetu Mohandas is clearly attempting to operate on an enormous canvas, but Toxic repeatedly exposes how little control she has over that canvas. What may have looked ambitious on paper becomes unwieldy on screen. The film desperately reaches for mythic grandeur but settles for cinematic grandstanding. And Yash, for all his obvious magnetism, seems trapped inside a machine that keeps recycling the very mannerisms he needs to leave behind.
Ultimately, Toxic is not merely a disappointing film; it is a cautionary tale about what happens when ambition outruns storytelling. Beneath the glossy frames, thunderous sound design and mountains of violence is an alarmingly hollow cinematic experience. It is exhausting rather than exhilarating, chaotic rather than complex, and bloated rather than epic.
For a film called Toxic, the title proves to be almost painfully appropriate. This is cinema as endurance test—a spectacularly expensive misfire that mistakes excess for excellence and leaves its audience with little more than a headache when the credits finally roll.
Bollywoodwallah Rating: ★ 1/5
