Thuglife Review : Betrayals, bulletproof boomers & baffling dialogues. When epic meets eh!!
Thug Life directed by Maniratnam and starring Kamal Haasan, Silambarasan (Simbu), Trisha, Abhirami, Pankaj Tripathi and music by AR Rehman released with much fanfare for obvious reasons.
Thug Life marks the return of two titans, Mani Ratnam and Kamal Haasan, after nearly four decades, and expectations couldn’t have been higher. But what unfolds is less a triumphant reunion and more a bloated, disjointed nostalgia trip that gets lost in its own spectacle.
Thuglife Storyline
The story follows Rangaraya Sakthivel (Haasan), an aging gangster betrayed by those closest to him. What could have been a gripping tale of loyalty, power, and redemption ends up being a chaotic mesh of timelines, overstuffed subplots, and emotional arcs that go nowhere. There’s a lingering promise of depth, an orphaned child, fractured relationships, betrayal rooted in misunderstanding, but none of these threads are allowed to breathe. The film races from one dramatic beat to another without taking stock of its emotional stakes.
Visually, the film impresses. Ravi K Chandran’s cinematography is sweeping and polished, and AR Rahman’s music is as immersive as ever. The first half even flirts with the idea of greatness. But that fleeting energy quickly gives way to a second half that collapses under its own ambition.
Mani Ratnam and Kamal Haasan Come Back After Years…But
Cameos abound with no clear purpose and the plot frequently derails itself trying to juggle too many strands at once. Worse still, the writing becomes embarrassingly thin. Trisha’s role, in particular, is woefully underwritten. And some of the dialogues—’Do you know Dara Singh?’ and ‘Madam, I’m your only Adam’—feels like it was yanked from a bad spoof. Both Abhirami and Trisha scenes are not at what Mani Ratnam’s heroine characters used to be.
Kamal Haasan gives it his all, but even he can’t salvage a script that he co-wrote, asks us to believe he can single-handedly defeat younger foes after being drugged, survive a terrible fall into a valley with bullets shot on, avalanches, and deliver corny lines with a straight face. At a certain point, even suspension of disbelief starts to feel insulted.
Simbu’s characterisation and appeal look different from his usual style. His role is a passive and subtle one.
In the end, Thug Life isn’t a bad-looking film. It’s not devoid of talent or moments of flair. But it’s deeply hollow, an overlong, indulgent exercise that forgets what made Ratnam’s past work so memorable: empathy, nuance, and storytelling rooted in the real world.
Here, all that gets buried under loud action, flashy edits, and hollow bravado. It has the weakest writing with Mani Ratnam on autopilot—technically competent, emotionally vacant.
Rating: 0.5/5
Fridaywall Magazine |Digital Magazine in Hyderabad | Thuglife Review | Kamal Haasan | Maniratnam Movies
