Thug Life Hindi dubbed review: Mr. Kamal, Mani – give back my money

Thug Life Hindi dubbed review: Mr. Kamal, Mani – give back my money

‘Thug Life’: As soon as this utter boredom from the great Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam ended, I cried out loud, “Aakhir Kyu, Why, What went wrong, where has the magic gone, ‘thug liya’, am conned”.

The above feeling came Dil Se – ‘Dil Se’ remember the celebrated master Mani Ratnam’s first blunder.

Thug Life movie review

‘Khair’ (by the way) in all the Kannada Tamil thunder that gave ‘Thug Life’ the coverage, milage etc, I expected the grand reunion of the great Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam after the iconic epic cult classic crime drama Nayakan (1987) to be something memorable and having a profound impact. But, ‘Thug Life’ turned out to be a one hundred and sixty-five minutes of huge disappointment which is amply depressing.

The opening itself is so weird and off putting where we see a bearded Kamal Haasan as Rangaraaya Shakti talking about his age-old battle with the God of death – Yamraj somewhere. Cut To 1994, Shakti (Kamal Haasan) a powerful thug with his gang - Nassar as Manickam - Sakthivel's elder brother, Tanikella Bharani as Sivaguru – brother of Rangaraya Shakti wife Jeeva (Abhirami) and Pathros (Joju George) are attacked by cops. In the fierce gun battle father of young newspaper delivery boy Amar (Simbu) gets killed. Shakti adopts Amar (Simbu), all is going well but one day misunderstanding erupts resulting in lives of Shakti and Amar life turning upside down. Where it ends, who wins forms the crux of this film.

Conviction, character arc, definition and reliability are conspicuous by their absence in this 165-minute show reel which obviously focuses primarily on Kamal, his heroics with Yamraj and his escapades with Trisha Krishnan who plays Indrani his girlfriend in the film. The main culprits are the scriptwriters - Mani Ratnam and Kamal Haasan (it seems the duo knew about the outcome and decided to take the entire blame on themselves – good gesture – pun intended).

Never, ever expected such tedious boredom from the ‘Nayakan’ jodi of actor Kamal and Director Mani. Both in their individual capacity and incredible talents have blended aesthetics with commercial and made it thoroughly believable in past. Their illustrated individual list is long and when they came together around thirty-eight years ago with ‘Nayakan’ everyone was in awe.

Today, when Kamal got down from the helicopter in those breathtaking peaks of Himalayas in Hilsa (Nepal), my eyes popped up but my mind kept on wondering what is suddenly happening in this pictorial scenery (before that I must have checked by watched thrice to see when will the interval slide arrive on screen). The interval point comes and it’s a relief but very short lived as we know exactly what will happen post interval and its still one hour twenty minutes of film remaining.

Praying for some wonders, miracle, I watched the second half but ‘what is written is written and done’ I have to only watch and blame my faith plus fate.

On the acting front, despite a one-dimensional role, Kamal Hassan is excellent, Simbu is strictly okay, same for Trisha and other characters. What the hell was Ali Fazal doing, he got hardly 3-4 scenes.

 

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