Thug Life (2025) – A Familiar Ride That Goes Nowhere

When a film brings together two legends of Tamil cinema, Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam, you walk in expecting something memorable. Sadly, Thug Life turns out to be anything but that. It felt like watching an overused gangster template, just with a bigger budget and more familiar faces. With a heavy heart, Mangoidiots gives it a Rotten rating.

The film opens with Sakthivel (played by Kamal) narrating his close calls with death and claiming a friendship with Lord Yama himself. To illustrate this, we see stylised Japanese warriors attacking him, meant to be metaphorical, I suppose, but it didn’t land. I sat up, hoping for a vintage Mani Ratnam moment. But then, in the very next scene, we are taken to Delhi in the 1980s, where a police team storms into a thickly populated residential complex with guns blazing, to eliminate Sakthivel and his gang. Even within the logic of commercial cinema, this sequence was hard to digest. Which police force, in any era, would risk so many civilian lives by firing like that? It was an incomprehensible scene, and unfortunately, it set the tone for what followed.

We are told that Sakthivel and his elder brother Manickam (Nassar) run a powerful gang. Sakthivel adopts and raises a young boy, Amar, who grows up to be played by Silambarasan (STR). There’s also a rival don, some gang politics, and an upright cop played by Ashok Selvan. Beyond that, there’s nothing new. Just recycled scenes and subplots we’ve seen in countless Tamil films over the last 30 years.

There are enough action scenes, and Kamal performs them well. But none of them gives you a rush, they are all too predictable. STR manages to hold his own even in frames with Kamal, which is not a small feat. But the weak screenplay doesn’t support him. Trisha is wasted in a role that doesn’t register, while Abhirami gets a better share, especially during an emotional scene near the end. Ashok Selvan, as the honest officer, unfortunately, has no real arc.

What didn’t work for me was not the acting or the direction, but the absence of a coherent story. The film throws in everything—short-term revenge, long-term revenge, gang rivalry, greed, treachery, love, romance, loss, empathy—but doesn’t stay with anything long enough for it to register. Because of this, I couldn’t connect emotionally with either Sakthivel or Amaran. We’re never sure who they are, what they represent, or why they’re doing all that they do.

In the end, Thug Life left me tired and disconnected. A missed opportunity, especially with the talent involved.