‘Toxic’ Review: A Gory Exploration of Love and Violence

New Delhi, India Aug 27, 2026 ALN: Toxic takes its “Adults only” certification very seriously. Geetu Mohandas’s latest movie, co-written with and led by Kannada star Yash, features genocide-level displays of violence interspersed with many examples of what is considered grown-up behavior.

Yash, playing the gangster Raya, leaves no opportunity to grind, bash, slash, and burn his way to power. This randy rando out-drinks the average alcoholic and puffs incessantly on cigarettes and cigars but still manages to keep his liver and lungs in good condition for whatever he sets his mind to.

Excess is the point in a 194-minute film that seeks to turn machismo on its head. On paper, Toxic threatens to re-examine the unreconstructed male character type personified by Yash in his KGF movies. Yash plays an anti-hero similar to Rocky from K.G.F but also different: Raya, unlike Rocky, will be shown a mirror to the consequences of his actions, especially on the women he beds and sometimes weds.

Hyperbole will be used to cut hyperbole. Toxic will pile up the corpses, unleash the slo-mo swagger, and roll out punchy dialogue, but there will be a larger, noble purpose to all of it – that’s the promise, at least.

Events play out largely between the 1940s and 1960s in a place alleged to be Goa. Raya and his sister Ganga (Nayanthara) and their factotum Karmadi (Sudev Nair) are locked in a gang war with Salvador (Darrell D’Silva) and the siblings Tony (Akshay Oberoi) and Elizabeth (Huma Qureshi). The population of colonial Goa rapidly dwindles as these groups battle for supremacy.

Raya also gets it on with Salvador’s daughter Rebecca (Tara Sutaria), a lust-laced business arrangement that has Ganga’s approval. Brother and sister are terribly close, having shared a miserable childhood. But then a circus rolls into town.

Trapeze artist Nadia (Kiara Advani) has perfect balance and the right air of enigma to attract Raya. Years after their passionate romance, a Raya look-alike pops up. He’s called Ticket (Yash again) and is determined to make Raya pay for his behavior. Raya is now with Melissa (Rukmini Vasanth) – women can’t stop falling for him – and has more to lose than before.

Toxic supplies, without being asked for it, extra doses of everything: modes of dispatch, proof of Raya’s sexual prowess, aphoristic lines, stylized sets, and visuals. The lack of moderation quickly overtakes any effort to understand why men do what they do – and why women enable them.

People are skewered like kebabs. An unending supply of ammo is fired from an array of weapons. Raya literally causes a bed to break. Liberation comes and goes in Goa but the carnage continues.

Rajeev Ravi’s cinematography is agile, vivid, and intensely colorful, producing stunning imagery while also elevating banal scenes. There are a million ways to die in this hyper-real part of India. With Ravi behind the camera, the brutality is almost seductive.

Geetu Mohandas is in here somewhere, trying to tell us that she’s having immense fun steering scene after scene of pointless blood-letting. Mohandas proves her knack for staging action set pieces, especially in the striking finale. But the touch of the thoughtful director behind Liar’s Dice and Moothon is seen infrequently, in the curiosity about what constitutes masculinity, the empathy for children who grew up too soon, and the sensual courtship.

There are times when the deadly serious film, which is trying too hard to be seriously deadly, takes stock of its ludicrousness. First, you take off your clothes and then slash your wrists, Raya complains to one of the women. Where do I focus?

Raya’s devoted sister and various conquests result in ample screen time for several actresses. Of them, only Kiara Advani makes an impact. Advani is luminous and heart-tugging as a woman who enters a relationship with Raya with her eyes wide open, only to be blindsided by his cowardice.

The track of the sister, despite its potential, goes nowhere. Rukmini Vasanth has the sorriest subplot, playing the latest femme who finds the fatal Raya irresistible. Huma Qureshi is reduced to cackling evilly like a Disney cartoon villain.

Despite the opportunity to populate an overtly male genre with female characters, Toxic peddles tiresome stereotypes about damaging mothers and damaged single mothers. There are sharper insights into toxic masculinity from Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal, which, while valorizing its hero, also provides a glimpse into the roots of his derangement.

In Toxic, Raya’s psychosis is conveniently externalized and then superficially internalized. Stop the cut-price therapy, I am beyond repair, Raya tells Melissa. That’s accurate, but the savagery-addicted Toxic isn’t introspective enough to justify this wisdom.

The movie is a Yash showcase, while claiming to be otherwise. Yash is commanding and occasionally poignant as Raya, a walking grenade with the pin thrown away who bellows into the ether when he’s feeling vulnerable. As the beard-free Ticket, Yash supplies the film’s single-biggest shock: the difference that facial hair makes in boosting an actor’s persona.