Thug Life

You know Mani Ratnam’s Thug Life movie is about to go off the rails (in the best way) when it opens with Kamal Haasan solemnly standing in a field, musing about death and how he has been shadowed by Yamraj (the Hindu god of death and justice) for ages. From there, we are hurled through revenge arcs and philosophical showdowns. And that’s just the first hour. Let’s explore the Thug Life movie story and ending of the Kamal Haasan movie, which is explained here. The film, after that prologue, begins with a monochrome Old Delhi in the 1990s. We learn that Kamal Haasan (perhaps digitally de-aged, perhaps not) plays the role of Sakthivel, a crime lord who rules a section of Old Delhi with his brother. Their chief rival is Sadanand (Mahesh Manjrekar). The scene begins with a parley between Sadanand and the brothers at the latter’s place. But the parley is a ruse, for as soon as Sadanand leaves, armed police (presumably on his payroll) enter the premises and there is a shootout.

Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam- two stalwarts coming together in a film is a cinematic event in itself. The highly anticipated film Thug Life, which marks the collaboration of the two legends after 37 years, is finally here. Expectations, thus, were high for this one from the time the film was announced. But Haasan, who also serves as a co-writer and co-producer of the film, delivers a middling performance in a formulaic film that is spruced with well-known actors, both from the south as well as the north. Ratnam, who is considered one of the best auteurs in the country, always has managed to make warm, emotional, and gritty dramas. Each of his movies has the distinct mark of the filmmaker, which is hard to emulate. Thug Life, however , seems to be more of a massy drama which doesn’t particularly have any distinct stamp of the filmmaker.

What a wonderful world it would be if Tamil and Telugu commercial directors could apply their considerable talents to telling concise, coherent stories. The bloat is out of control. I’m not just talking about the dozen retrofitted plots of Kalki 2898 AD or the maddening detours of Pushpa 2. Even smart, funny films like Jigarthanda DoubleX stretch their material unduly. I admit this isn’t a widely held opinion. Audiences today clearly like the mess. As luck would have it, the wrong director decided to simplify. Thug Life is Mani Ratnam at his most basic. This isn’t to say he’s made a terrible film—it’s just not the film you’d expect Ratnam, comfortably established as the preeminent popular director of the past 40 years, to make at 69. In his previous two films, Ponniyin Selvan: I and its sequel, he created a rich, teeming world and asked audiences to keep up. No one will have any problem following Thug Life, a remarkably linear tale for an industry that loves flashbacks and wrong-footing the viewer.

Late in this sprawling and disappointingly inconsistent gangster saga, the male protagonist, badly wounded, asks a doctor about the exact nature of the injection that she is about to administer. She lets on that the fluid in the syringe is a sedative guaranteed to lull him to sleep. Mani Ratnam’s Thug Life may not be as soporific as that but large swathes of it could certainly have done with targeted shots of stimulants. Thug Life isn’t quite the kind of film that you expect to be a huge disappointment. In an era in which scepticism, even trepidation, precedes the decision to watch a movie that has blockbuster aspirations, a Mani Ratnam movie, no matter what genre it belongs to, is usually an exception. It generates both anticipation and excitement.

The first half of Thug Life has something that recent Tamil gangster dramas don’t: drama. The film begins in 1995 in Old Delhi with a supposed peace talk between two gangs in a crowded and bustling old building. On one hand, we have Rangaraya Saktivel (Kamal Haasan) and his gang, on the other, Sadanand (Mahesh Manjrekar), who has set his enemies up. The police force close in and amidst all this tension, a father, his son, and daughter go about delivering dailies to each door. The exchanges between the characters are natural and subtle, and we get a smart, de-aged Kamal Haasan. He doesn’t get a raging introduction scene. Anything and everything is for the scene and the tension, which ends in the poor father getting shot as collateral damage and Sakthivel walking away carrying the orphaned boy Amar (Silambarasan TR) as his ‘shield’ from the police bullets. This straightforward, simple, but effective storytelling makes the first half of Thug Life an engrossing watch, and it undoes everything it achieves in the second.

पुलिस और गुंडों की गोलीबारी में एक शरीफ आदमी मारा गया। उसके बेटे को एक गैंग्सटर ने पाला-पोसा। गैंग्सटर जब जेल जाने लगा तो उस बच्चे को अपना वारिस बना गया। गैंग्सटर के बड़े भाई को बुरा लगा तो उसने उस बच्चे के कान भरने शुरू कर दिए। एक दिन उस गैंग्स्टर के अपने ही उसके खिलाफ हो गए। लेकिन उस गैंग्स्टर की यमराज से दोस्ती है। वह लौटा और उसने सबका बदला लिया। ऊपर बताए गए कहानी के ढांचे में पांच मुख्य बिंदु हैं-1-शरीफ आदमी की मौत, जिसके बच्चे को गैंग्स्टर ने पाला, 2-गैंग्स्टर का जेल जाना, 3-उस बच्चे को वारिस बनाना, जिससे भाई जल-भुन गया 4-उसके अपनों का उस पर हमला और 5-उसका लौट कर बदला लेना। इस फिल्म को देखिए तो इन सभी बिंदुओं की बुनियाद इस कदर कमज़ोर दिखाई देती है कि हैरानी होती है कि इस फिल्म को लिखने वालों में खुद कमल हासन और मणिरत्नम भी हैं। ज़रा-सा भी दिमाग लगाते ही इस फिल्म की लिखाई की सिलाई उधड़ने लगती है। 1-उस शरीफ आदमी का मारा जाना अचानक से ठूंसा गया लगता है, अखबार बच्चे बांट रहे थे और गोली बेवजह चली, 2-गैंग्सटर जिस अपराध के लिए जेल जा रहा था, वह साबित कैसे हुआ होगा? 3-जेल जाते समय उसने भाई की बजाय उस बच्चे को ही वारिस क्यों चुना, फिल्म नहीं दिखा पाती, 4-जहां पर गैंग्स्टर के अपनों ने उस पर हमला किया, वहां जाने का प्लान जबरन घुसेड़ा गया लगता है और 5-अंत में गैंग्स्टर उस बच्चे को एक बात बताने जाता है लेकिन बताने की बजाय वह उसे मारे ही जा रहा है, मारे ही जा रहा है, आखिर क्यों?