Thug Life Review: Mani Ratnam’s Indian 2

BOTTOM LINE
Mani Ratnam’s Indian 2

RATING
1.75/5

CENSOR
U/A, 2h 45m

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What Is the Film About?

Thug Life’s story revolves around Rangaraya Shaktiraju (Kamal Haasan), a powerful thug. It explores why he raises Amar (Simbu), the misunderstandings within their circle, and what strains their relationship to the point where Shakti’s life turns upside down. How it all eventually ends forms the crux of Thug Life.

Performances

Kamal Haasan the legendary actor plays the role of Shakti. His screen presence is terrific and there’s never any doubt about his acting skills. Unfortunately, beyond the initial portions, even his performance loses impact — mainly due to the way the role is written and presented in an unexpectedly powerless manner, in a setup that demands a threatening body language.

Simbu plays Amar, a crucial character who holds equal importance to Kamal Haasan’s role. However, his impact is barely felt. While his styling is decent and he looks fine on screen, there is not a single memorable scene in the entire film where he leaves a lasting impression.

Trisha gets a brief role, leaving little to talk about in terms of performance. Even her “Sugar Baby” song is wasted, adding nothing significant to the film.

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Analysis

Thug Life, directed by Mani Ratnam, is set against a familiar gangster backdrop where, as the drama unfolds, insecurities within relationships slowly surface. While the setup feels routine on the surface, Mani Ratnam faces the challenge of refreshing it with engaging drama and unexpected twists.

The first half opens with flashback episodes of Shakthi (Kamal Haasan). His relationships — with Amar (Simbu), his brother (Nassar), Trisha, and others — provide enough characters to build a compelling narrative, even if the backdrop feels familiar.

However, the way Mani Ratnam presents the story, the first half comes off quite flat.

It’s not just the absence of action highs — the drama itself lacks emotional depth.

For example, the conflicts between Shakthi and Nassar, and more crucially between Shakthi and Amar, don’t carry enough weight to make the drama gripping. Even Shakthi’s relationship with Trisha isn’t explored enough to engage the viewer. Like the other relationships, it too stays at a surface level without offering much emotional pull.

As a result, the first half feels slow and overly stretched because the emotional conflicts fail to draw the audience in.

That said, the technical aspects, visuals, and casting are top-notch. Kamal Haasan’s commanding screen presence keeps the film watchable so far. But overall, the first half feels both lengthy and flat. The interval episode finally brings some much-needed spice, set against an impressive visual backdrop, and leaves room for a potentially stronger second half.

The second half begins by showing what happens to Shakti after two years — how he becomes even more powerful, mastering martial arts and more.

But what follows is Shakti’s return, which should have felt intimidating to the men who once surrounded and betrayed him. Instead, we get a powerless, lifeless return and a clueless revenge drama that plays out through the rest of the second half.

The train station fight sequence — one of his early acts of revenge — works to some extent, thanks to decent action choreography. But what follows — whether it’s his confrontations with the other men, the track involving Trisha, Shakti’s reunion with his wife, or his face-off with his brother Nassar – none of it clicks.

The drama simply fails to engage. The core issue lies in the direction, which presents the revenge angle as flat and emotionless.

At this stage, we are left with Simbu -the final and most important character introduction. But even this arc gets wasted in the final act, where there’s neither any emotional payoff nor any action high. By this point, even expecting any sort of engaging moment feels greedy. The ending too is far from satisfying.

Looking at Thug Life as a whole, it’s nothing but a done-to-death revenge template. While the casting is stellar, nobody — except Kamal Haasan to some extent in the initial portions — leaves any impact. And even Kamal Haasan’s screen presence fades as the film moves into the second half.

In the end, Thug Life turns out to be a routine revenge drama with a star cast where neither the drama lands nor the action works. A terribly disappointing film from the iconic Nayakan combo – one that probably shouldn’t have even happened at this point.

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Performances by Others Actors

Thug Life features a stellar, well-known cast. While they all deliver their performances, none of them make a strong positive impact — largely due to how their characters are written.

Starting with Nassar, he plays a crucial role and does his part, but ultimately adds little to the film’s overall impact.

Aishwarya Lekshmi appears in a brief role and delivers a neat performance within her limited screen time.

Joju George also plays a short role. Both Joju George and Ashok Selvan are completely wasted, along with several other known actors who are given little to work with.

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Music and Other Departments?

Thug Life has music composed by A. R. Rahman. The album features several songs, but among them, “Achcha Vanne Poovvaa” stands out. This song is used multiple times throughout the film and makes the right impact whenever it appears. However, aside from Achcha Vanne Poovvaa, none of the other songs leave any significant impression or contribute positively to the film’s narrative or visuals.

When it comes to the background score, Rahman seems to have attempted a more international-style approach — or at least that’s the assumption. But for the most part, the background score feels almost entirely absent, becoming one of the film’s biggest technical disappointments. In a revenge-driven gangster drama like Thug Life, a muted or minimal background score simply doesn’t work. The lack of a powerful score severely affects the film’s action and emotional highs, leaving many scenes flat.

Cinematography by Ravi K. Chandran is one of the film’s biggest strengths. The visuals are consistently excellent from start to finish, giving the movie a grand, big-ticket cinematic feel.

Editing by Sreekar Prasad is completely disappointing. The first half alone feels like watching an entire movie, while the second half drags on even further, making the runtime feel exhausting and difficult to sit through.

On the production side, Raaj Kamal Films International and Madras Talkies have delivered solid production values. The film looks rich and visually appealing, maintaining the grand scale of a big-ticket release.

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Highlights?

Kamal Haasan in the initial portions

Visual quality of the film

Set design and production work

Drawbacks?

Powerless thugs

Weak character writing

No emotional peaks or action highs

Never-ending runtime

Background score

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Did I Enjoy It?

No

Will You Recommend It?

No

Thug Life Movie Review by M9