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Maybe, it’s not a compliment to start out comparing a film to Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s works. I can imagine how Toxic might have been pitched as something that ‘subverts’ Vanga, which is not quite the case. My most guttural response to it was, a Vanga film if it learned therapy-speak. This might be a reductive and over-simplistic response, but having mulled over it, this comes closest to my purest reaction to this (knowingly) campy, indulgent, loud, sweeping film, which has something most cash cows drop at the first slight inconvenience: a clear conscience. It has all ingredients that we’ve come to associate with pan-India blockbusters from the last decade – multi-ethnicity actors, cramped world-building, gargantuan action set-pieces, dialogues delivered like ad catchphrases, racy sex scenes featuring multiple women, and a three-act structure for key sequences – which means we’re subjected to the “hero’s entry” a dozen times.

The only twist here is that the film is directed by a woman. Geetu Mohandas (of Liar’s Dice and Moothon fame) goes out all guns blazing, like her protagonist. Now, whether I was less irked by the sex scenes knowing a female director was behind it, or if the scenes were aesthetically shot, can be a matter of debate. And there might be no clear answers. A distinct quality I surely noted was how the women seemed in control during the sex scenes, as agents of their own pleasure. Also, like her male counterparts, Mohandas doesn’t play coy while giving her star a film that adores him. But along with that, there’s also the climactic........

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