Consider these lines from Mario Puzo’s The Godfather: “Great men are not born great, they grow great,” and “A man who is not a father to his children can never be a real man.” No matter which side we start from in deconstructing director Geetu Mohandas’ Yash-starrer Toxic, we eventually end up in the same sparsely lit chamber where Raya (Yash) sits in solitude, muttering words more or less similar to Puzo’s, trying to understand their essence.Toxic is a textbook example of the phrase, “you become what you hate.” Or, in other words, Geetu ambitiously tries to destroy the hypermasculine, misogynistic Indian star vehicles on their own turf, only to deliver a mutated version of the exact ultra-violent template.Cinema Anatomy | Dear filmmakers, stop turning Mohanlal, other superstars into a joke with forced cameosThe crime thriller may have started its journey by assuming it was Edward Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) from Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island (2010), and that it would tame the notorious Andrew Laeddis. But in the end, it must face the fact that Edward is Andrew.Deconstructing the ambition behind ToxicThe Yash-starrer is essentially a mass entertainer. But Geetu Mohandas tries to add a psychological and emotional layer to the template, exploring the repercussions of the violent man’s actions. Unfortunately, everything gets lost in translation, and what we are left with is a mishmash of grand ambitions.Toxic confuses us, making us wonder what the heck is going on. More damningly, it often confuses itself. It struggles in finalising if it wants to be an elegant, chic noir-ish flick or a dramatic crime thriller. The film is also torn between what it initially wanted to be, what it could have been had it followed that path, what it is trying to be now, and where all this will eventually take it. Toxic is a textbook example of the phrase, “you become what you hate.” (Credit: Instagram/@toxic_themovie)From the very first sequence, this bewilderment is evident. Toxic opens with a long sequence showing Nadia (Kiara Advani), a dishevelled circus performer, giving an overly dramatic lecture to her young son, Ticket, hinting at why his father (Raya) doesn’t like seeing her face. She instils in him the notion that his ultimate aim in life should be to get the man to call him by his name, thus accepting him as his son. After setting the stage for the father-son fairy tale, Nadia sets herself on fire, bringing down the Royale Circus along with her.Story continues below this adVisually grand, narratively flawedThe first time we step into Toxic’s elaborate, exquisite, and astonishingly detailed world — job well done by production designer TP Abid — we might assume the theatricality is in the visuals alone. However, the crime thriller is plagued by overly dramatic and poetic dialogues, which sound lifted from moral science textbooks and pack too many allegories but lack a soul.Another creative choice in the script, jointly written by Yash and Geetu Mohandas, that adds to the confusion is using Ticket as a narrator, which appears more convenient than purposeful, even if the movie tries to justify it in the climax.The major reason why it’s excruciating to sit through the 194-minute film is the sloppy, incoherent writing, with no proper character arcs or well-fleshed-out conflicts. Instead, Yash and Geetu simply scratch the surface of each plot device and move on to the next, with no payoffs.The script’s flimsiness is further exposed by the random characters who appear and disappear without proper introduction or later exploration. I mean, sure, spoon-feeding is a bad practice in filmmaking. But abandoning the audience to starve without even giving them one spoon to survive is foolish.Story continues below this adIn fact, almost no character is properly fleshed out. Aside from the philosophical lines they often deliver, we never really get to know who Raya’s sister Ganga (Nayanthara), his lover Nadia, his official partner Rebecca (Tara Sutaria), his boss’ mistress Elizabeth (Huma Qureshi), or his later wife Mellisa (Rukmini Vasanth) truly are. And, just as I have phrased it here, the identities of all these women are completely tied to Raya, leaving them with no individuality of their own, much like every other hypermasculine “pan-Indian” spectacles. Rukmini Vasanth portrays Mellisa, Kiara Advani plays Nadia, and Tara Sutaria appears as Rebecca in Toxic. (Credit: Instagram/@toxic_themovie)Even Raya is underwritten for that matter. If someone were to ask people around him something like, “What is Chandler Bing’s job?” about Raya, they might blurt out, “He’s a gangspondster.” We rarely see him doing anything but killing people, smoking, drinking, getting high, having sex, and hyping himself up with mass dialogues. If those were the KRAs for a job, Raya would be the “Employee of the Year” every time.Despite all this, can Toxic be dismissed outright? I would say, no.The seven sins, Hamlet and psychological subtexts in ToxicA deep-dive into the movie reveals that it is an inverted fairy tale revolving around the seven sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.Story continues below this adIn fact, it could have also served as an antidote or spoof of Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal (2023), as the Yash-starrer also explores “daddy issues,” but here a spade is called a spade.Interestingly, Geetu has dedicated the movie to her father, by noting, “It wasn’t easy, but you were mine, and I was yours,” thus adding a personal touch that makes the angle feel more original. However, somewhere down the line, the movie forgets its purpose. The major reason why it’s excruciating to sit through the 194-minute Toxic is the sloppy, incoherent writing. (Credit: Instagram/@toxic_themovie)(Spoilers ahead)Broadly, Toxic can be read as a modern, commercial-cinematic retelling of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. While the play features King Hamlet appearing before Prince Hamlet as a ghost and urging him to avenge his murder, Toxic inverts the roles, showing Ticket’s “ghost” following Raya with the same demand. However, in this version, Raya himself is Claudius (Prince Hamlet’s paternal uncle who killed the King), as his in/action led to Ticket’s death.Story continues below this adAbove its glossy surface, Toxic carries several emotional, hard-hitting layers. For instance, following Nadia’s death, we see Raya driving away with Ticket in the back seat. When the little one naively asks him questions that force him to face his conscience, Raya is enraged and exits his car near a cliff. As he gulps down a bottle, the car slides off the edge, falling into a lake. Realising this, Raya jumps in to “save” Ticket. However, Geetu brilliantly leaves it unsaid whether Raya purposefully let the car fall into the lake.Must Read | How Prithviraj and Classmates beat 4 superstars to become Onam winner, cultural phenomenonIt is when we analyse this in tandem with the climactic revelation that Ticket is actually just a fragment of Raya’s guilt-ridden mind that the movie’s potential, which Yash and Geetu butchered away, becomes evident.It doesn’t end here; Toxic could have easily shattered the patriarchal “pan-Indian” template forever, as the movie fundamentally revolves around a man who pays the price for his actions. Raya isn’t the master of his own fate; instead, he kneels before his destiny in the end.Story continues below this adAt one point, Rebecca asks Raya, “Will a selfish person like you ever fall in love?” This, along with the Godfather lines I mentioned at the start, forms the crux of the movie. Toxic is about a man who fails in love; a man who is never a father to his children; a macho man who thinks he is great but can’t even confront his own conscience; a man who believes he is invincible but eventually has to accept that he failed in life long ago.ICYMI | From Fahadh Faasil, Dulquer Salmaan to Vismaya Mohanlal: How Malayalam cinema handles nepotismToxic ending explained: Memory, guilt and unseen truthAlthough Toxic is largely tiring, the climax made me rethink the film. In the opening sequence, we see Royale Circus exploding. Little Ticket stands as a spectator, watching his home and mother being swallowed by huge flames. Raya stands a little farther away, watching it all unfold, helpless.Cut to the ending: they are almost in the same positions, but this time in a snowy landscape. Portrayed as a reflection of a fragment of Raya’s memory, the child sports the same clown makeup he wore that night at Royale Circus. An avalanche is heading their way.Story continues below this adNow, parallel the beginning and ending: did the flames that swallow Nadia also consume Ticket and Raya that night? Before being burnt alive, did they share their first and last hug? Did the director metamorphose the flames into snow that embraced them, uniting them forever?What if everything portrayed as having happened after that day was akin to the “seven minutes after death” of one of them? The fact that Raya’s mind sees his rivals running towards him during the climax as clowns in costume gives this reading further weight.Even if not, an analysis of the two sequences’ mise-en-scène show that they carry similarities. Director Geetu Mohandas, actor Yash and cinematographer Rajeev Ravi on the sets of Toxic. (Credit: Instagram/@toxic_themovie)While all the subversions sound cool, there’s no denying that Toxic is problematic to the core, particularly in the handling of female characters. And since the script never pulls off the subversions perfectly, these characters seem to conform to androcentrism and phallocentrism.Story continues below this adYet, does Geetu Mohandas deserve so much hate for the movie? She does deserve heat for blindly assuming she could uncompromisingly make a movie of her vision with the poster boy of machismo in India, Yash, who is yet to let go of the ghost of KGF’s Rocky.However, we shouldn’t forget that in the credits, Yash’s name appears before Geetu’s for the story and screenplay. Yet somehow (that somehow is just blatant misogyny), she is solely blamed for Toxic becoming a mess. Let’s not forget the same critics/fans would have conveniently overlooked her and labelled Toxic solely as a “Yash film” had it been impressive.Don’t Miss | Bethlehem Kudumba Unit review: Nivin Pauly leads a sweet, non-creepy age-gap rom-comTo rephrase Dr Manmohan Singh’s famous words here, history will definitely be kinder to Geetu, but we mustn’t ignore the fact that she became and served the very thing she swore to destroy. History will be kinder to her for attempting to smash the “pan-Indian” template and creating a movie out of Lady Macbeth’s words: “Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”Male gaze and problematic portrayal of womenBut the director does deserve criticism for the blatant sexualisation of women on screen. While one could argue that Toxic features only consenting adults having sex, the problem is not with sex scenes in general. The issue here is that the sex scenes contribute only to Raya’s character development and rarely to the women.Besides, the way the women are styled, captured, and portrayed reeks of a male gaze.At one point, we see Raya and a group of women in bed, only partially covered with sheets. There’s another shot of him sniffing cocaine off a random woman’s throat. Yes, he does say he has “no morality.” And you could argue these shots were included to explore his character further, but such claims don’t fool anyone.While it’s understandable that Yash and Nayanthara’s perpetually expressionless faces are by design — since Raya and Ganga don’t show their emotions or vulnerabilities to anyone but themselves — there are quite a few instances where it look plain stoic, diminishing the effect. In my humble opinion, Huma Qureshi is the only actor whose performance lands well. Nayanthara plays Ganga, and Huma Qureshi plays Elizabeth in Toxic. (Credit: Instagram/@toxic_themovie)On the technical front, Rajeev Ravi’s cinematographic mastery shines in several moments. Whether it’s the high-angle shot of the bomb explosion’s fire slowly rising to consume Nadia on a trapeze as she smiles, the giant wheel on fire, or the scenes in Macau, Rajeev Ravi’s brilliance in using light and shadow judiciously stands out. However, the sheer number of slow-motion shots in Toxic is unbearable, which never contribute to creating on-screen mass.The movie is also marred by unnecessarily loud electronic music that doesn’t gel with the visuals. If only Toxic featured a better soundtrack, or even a composer who understood the soul of the movie, like Anirudh Ravichander in director Arun Matheswaran’s DC (2026).Also to blame is the unsteady editing. Sometimes the cuts happen too quickly; other times, far too slowly. The sad part is that editor Ujwal Kulkarni doesn’t seem to have any rationale for his choices. However, the editing shines when Yash appears in a dual role as Raya and Ticket, with shots seamlessly stitched together. Neha R Bajaj and Saniya Sardhariya’s (for Yash) costume design is also impressive. Toxic struggles in finalising if it wants to be an elegant, chic noir-ish flick or a dramatic crime thriller. (Credit: Instagram/@toxic_themovie)The violence in the film is just a rehash of every “pan-Indian” actioner we’ve ever seen. And the sad part is that Toxic’s action choreography never goes beyond that template.Even though the stunt sequence showing female ninjas disguised as nuns trying to kill Raya is sleek, it doesn’t come close to the exhilaration offered by director AR Murugadoss’ Kaththi (2014) where Vijay fought two trained female assassins.Cinema cannot exist in a vacuum; it’s all about the discussions that follow. In the Cinema Anatomy column, we delve into the diverse layers and dimensions of films, aiming to uncover deeper meanings and foster continuous discourses.