Toxic movie review: “So you think I’m a bad guy? No, I think you’re toxic.”This exchange comes at a point in the film by which time it’s been clearly established that Raya (Yash) is the kind of Alpha male who thinks blood spatters are the best accessories ever, especially when they spurt from freshly torn and broken limbs.So is that even a question? No, it’s entirely rhetorical. It’s exactly the thing that defines this post-Independence gangster saga, all 3 hours 15 minutes of it, for an audience primed for as much gore as the leading man can dish out, especially when he’s seen how it got lapped up in his previous mammoth hits (KGF 1 and 2).ALSO READ | Toxic Movie Review and Release LIVE Updates: Fans call it Yash’s ‘career-best performance’, while others call it ‘one of the worst’Like that double bill, Toxic is also a period film, in that it opens in Goa in 1947, and rolls through 20 years or so, borrowing from the classic gangsta beats of Hollywood classics like ‘Godfather’ – men in sharp suits and sideburns and fedoras, and women in shiny sheaths and slim cigarette holders and smoky night-clubs – as well as dropping big nods to Animal: can it be any other way for our A-listers playing oversexed, emotionally stunted men sporting thick beards?I went into Toxic not so much for the biff-bang-thud as for the romance, held out as a promise by the tagline, and the fact that director Geetu Mohandas has had the ability to kindle softer emotions within her characters (Liar’s Dice, Moothon) even when they’ve been in tough situations. I wanted very much to see if I would be swept away by this ‘fairy-tale for grown-ups’, a genre very few Indian filmmakers dare attempt.Sadly, that happens so seldom in this eye-glazing, endless litany of violence taking place in picturesque locations in Goa and Macau and elsewhere, where mobsters and corrupt forces combine to push crime, and where faceless armies of gun-toting goons keep popping up, shooting and scooting through one set-piece after another, all more exhausting than exhilarating.Story continues below this adIt’s only when the women appear, all of whom are defined by the relationship to the men they are attached to – it may be Mohandas at the helm, but it is finally, and irrevocably, a Rocking Star Yash film – that the film stops to catch a breath. Huma Qureshi is a rival gangster’s moll. Tara Sutaria is the daughter of said gangster, who has feelings for our Raya. Ditto for Rukmini Vasanth. Nayanthara is Raya’s protective elder sister. Of the array, it is Kiara Advani as the gorgeous, grieving circus trapeze artist who arouses a softness in the hard-edged Raya, who leaves the most impact: if there’s anyone who makes this film, it’s her.Standing in the middle of all this maximalist murder and mayhem is Yash, who is given such lines as ‘ I don’t like violence but violence likes me’. The film would like us to believe that he is a gangster because of his circumstances, and not a monster. But to appease the constituency which likes their hero to be rough and tough with his women, Raya has no compunction about spouting coarse, sexist dialogues each time he drops his pants, which is a lot. And everytime he does it, the mostly young male audience in my first day first show, hooted and cheered.There’s also a father-son angle, and when it locks in, the film comes together, at least for a while. It becomes the heavily stylised fever dream that perhaps it was aiming more fully for, but it comes in too late. The rest of it is Yash nursing his toxic self through choppy, rushed scenes, plowing through pliant female flesh, hacking and shooting humans, with the body count piled so dizzyingly high that you lose count almost as soon as it opens.How can a fairytale be so hollow? Too much sound, too much fury, signifying very little.Story continues below this adToxic movie cast: Yash, Kiara Advani, Nayanthara, Huma Qureshi, Tara Sutaria, Akshay Oberoi, Rukmini VasanthToxic movie director: Geetu MohandasToxic movie rating: 1.5 stars