(If you haven’t watched the film yet, this article has spoilers)
A pan‑India film, written and shot in Kannada and English, has been named Toxic. Boasting five powerful female actors and one male superstar, the title could have referred to ‘toxic’ traits of human nature irrespective of gender. But when a gigantic budget is at stake, creative people tend to take safer routes.
Kabir Singh, Animal, Dhurandhar, KGF had already set the path. So, why not a Toxic?
The only difference is a female director this time has taken up the job, adding her own world of vaulting imagination and ambition on the broad shoulders of Yash.
Toxicity sells. Daddy issues sell. No questions asked. But the only question that persists after the saga ends is: why was there so much hullabaloo over female pleasure to tell a story of a deranged gangster who proudly says, ‘My mother tongue is violence. The universal language’?
Sex, casino, opium, and—most importantly—women with bare backs and ruby lips are stock characters of a gangster drama. Toxic is no exception.
What caught the eyeballs was that a bunch of prominent names across the Hindi and South industries (Nayanthara, Kiara Advani, Tara Sutaria, Huma Qureshi and Rukmini Vasanth) came together to play significant roles in Rocking Star Yash’s film.
Sadly, all the female characters are woven into the plot to intensify the gangster Raya’s (played by Yash) generational trauma, guilty conscience and existential crisis while he navigates the world of power, lust and bloodbath spanning two decades.
Taking a cue from the protagonist Raya’s words, our question is not based on morality but on a simple promise and offering barter that every film initiates with its first teaser release.
Intimate scenes, titillation of the senses, raunchy scenes of licking stash from a woman’s body—nothing is new to an audience that has already watched the Netflix show 365 Days and many national and international gangster dramas.
I hope Geethu Mohandas does know that female pleasure is not equivalent to titillation and some intimate scenes.
Came For Tabahi, Ended Up With Nothing
The first motion of conversation was set when the teaser of Toxic showed a woman having rough sex inside a car at a cemetery. Christian bodies opposed it; the Internet was furious; and director Ram Gopal Varma called Geethu Mohandas the ‘ultimate symbol of women empowerment’ for imagining the scene.
After seeing the @TheNameIsYash starring trailer of #Toxic I have no doubt that @GeethuMohandas_ is the ultimate symbol of Women Empowerment ..No Male director is Man enough in comparison to this Woman .. I still can’t believe she shot this 👇🏻 😳 https://t.co/ZxyxU8Da40 pic.twitter.com/qzFUcv9JIb
— Ram Gopal Varma (@RGVzoomin) January 8, 2026
The film has only that much, and nothing more.
Raya and Nadia (played by Kiara Advani) traverse the path from lust to love—from car sex to the beach, from solitary roads to intimate corners of rooms. But it’s nothing out of the box.
Raya and Rebecca (played by Tara Sutaria) have a shower scene and a couple of intimate scenes on the bed and in a bathtub. But they are neither bold nor aesthetic.
If anything that adds up to female pleasure (without its sexual connotation) it is Raya’s fight with a bunch of martial‑arts‑trained women who come disguised as nuns.
Some might find it offensive, some might find it creepy; but the director knew what she wanted to do—stretching the limits of your imagination to establish Raya’s footprint in the treasure trove of gangsters.
‘Daddy Issues Are Simply Daddy Issues’
From Salim-Javed to Anurag Kashyap, from Deewar to Sacred Games—Hindi films and films in other languages have churned out multiple flicks on daddy issues. Probably the older generations called it by some other name. The woke generation spelled it out. But daddy issues are at the core of Toxic, driving Raya to be toxic.
Women and female pleasure came much later into his life.
Raya was a newborn when his mother killed their father in front of his eyes. Raya’s sister Ganga (played by Nayanthara), who eventually shapes his ambition as a substitute mother figure, takes the responsibility of feeding the baby brother. Raya also kills his mother when he finds out that she uses her tween daughter for prostitution.
Nurtured under the shadow of a big sister, Raya is always told by the women around him to conquer, to be a winner.
He didn’t have a father figure in his life. Tormented by childhood trauma, Raya never let himself feel like a father until he meets his bastard son (with Nadia), Ticket.
The film doesn’t seek a Freudian psychoanalysis of Raya’s character. But the climax and ending of the film are driven by tensions between a father and his bastard son.
In a nutshell, Toxic is a tale of a gangster tormented by daddy issues and the guilt of juggling love, life and lust simultaneously in a violence‑coded language. It’s simple.
Then why did Geethu Mohandas trigger a conversation when she put out an Instagram story in response to trolls: “Chilling while people figure out female pleasure, consent, women playing systems, etc., etc.”?
Conclusion
In a cinematic landscape, directors across languages have found ways to make money by showing toxic and hypermasculine men on screen. This genre has always existed; but for the last couple of years, it has been dominating the big screen and setting the box office on fire.
There’s nothing wrong with following the trend.
But sorry, Geethu Mohandas. Came for female pleasure and burdened with daddy issues. It’s actually ‘Toxic’.
