Thug Life Movie Review: Style over substance where even Kamal Haasan and Simbu can’t save this glossy gangster drama

“There’s a time when he feeds you a feast, and a time when he feeds you shit too,” says the gangster’s brother, summing up Kamal Haasan’s polarising behaviour as a roguish criminal.

In today’s work lingo, he's one gun-toting gangster who gaslights you like a pro in 'Thug Life'.

This glossy Mani Ratnam directorial, with trigger-happy players with suspicious moral compasses dressed in black linen kurtas and androgynous linen creations, features heavyweights and heavier artillery — Kamal Haasan, Simbu, Nasir, Ali Fazal, Trisha, Abhirami.

Oscar-winning AR Rahman’s background score thunders through it all.

But here’s the rub — it’s all surface-level swagger and zero soul. The plot has more loopholes than a crime boss’s tax returns.

You start to wonder if more effort went into styling Kamal’s long mane than into fixing the narrative. Full disclosure: I was too busy marveling at the long hair-sporting gangsters, wondering if that’s back as a summer trend — and more importantly, what conditioner did they use while polishing off people or severing heads?

The film throws together a bunch of compelling actors, but forgets to connect the dots.

Power, greed, ambition, pettiness — all the juicy themes are there, just not explored with any real depth.

It begins with a gloriously choreographed shootout between Kamal’s gangster kingpin and the cops. In the chaos, he spots a boy distributing newspapers, caught in the crossfire with his sister. The sister, Chandra, goes missing, but Kamal saves the boy, and they grow up as two peas in a trauma-soaked pod.

Simbu and Kamal are solid in their roles, but emotionally? You’re left cold.

Barring an extended cameo by Aishwarya Lekshmi, none of the characters speak to you. Watch out for the climax where she does some emotional heavy-lifting.

But the film belongs to Kamal's character. He plays a petty, paranoid don constantly fearing betrayal from within. His unresolved sibling rivalry with his brother Nasser’s character simmers — but instead of hashing it out like adults, they plot murder and tribal decimation.

A scene where Rangarya Sakthivel (Kamal Haasan) questions his protégé Amar (Simbu)'s loyalty and wonders if he had plotted his murder had a lot of promise. But instead of diving deep into his vulnerability and pettiness, it switches gears rapidly to bullet-spraying.

Truth be told, those beautifully choreographed stunt scenes get exhausting.

Equally unsettling is Rangaraya Sakthivel's murky relationship dynamic at home — he has a wife, yes, but he’s also in a full-fledged affair with a prostitute-turned-moll (Trisha). The film treats this emotional duplicity with such casual ease, it’s hard not to be disturbed. Somehow, the film doesn't commit to any cause -- be a full-fledged gangster drama or an emotional love triangle. Rangaraya's ability to love two women and not being able to really choose could have been more nuanced. Here he just looks like an over-ripe, churlish man-child who wants it all.

Also Simbu's character, Amar, held a lot of promise but it wasn't fleshed out. The willingness with which he begins doubting the man who rehabilitated him and saved him from being an orphan was a bit too simplistic. Whatever happened to just clearing the air by asking your father-like figure who shaped your childhood for some clarity.

But the cinematography is stunning. Even with the overdone “family-run gang implodes” storyline, the shootout in the snow-clad Nepal actually lands. It's all so gloriously beautiful. But the scenes that follow that pivotal point border on the ludicrous. Why should every Indian action film have a monk resort healing the criminals and arming them with martial arts? Shouldn't we call it a day on that gangster cinematic trope?

And, let’s face it — if the story isn’t fresh, a few stylish frames won’t save it. The dialogues are painfully pithy. That clunker of a pickup line — “Madam, I am your only Adam” — co-written by Mani Ratnam and Kamal Haasan no less, makes you cringe out loud. Trisha, who looks divine, had an interesting scene where she talks about how she was used as a trophy girlfriend by men in her life and has no agency, but the over-stylised shot on a beach stripped that potentially stirring scene from soaring.

The film barely scrapes the surface emotionally. It’s dreadfully slow, painfully predictable, and ultimately a missed opportunity — dressed in bespoke black and armed to the teeth, but shooting blanks where it counts most.