Unpacking Thug Life: A Tale of Missed Connections

Thug Life — A film where what the thugs do in their “thug life” remains largely a mystery. We know they’re big shots, doing really well… but doing what? No one really knows.

A Mani Ratnam–Kamal Haasan collaboration, with music by A.R. Rahman — the hype was inevitable. Three legends coming together, backed by relentless marketing, raised every cinephile’s expectations sky-high.

Did it live up to the hype? For me — not quite.

The central theme is compelling: Sakthivel’s repeated encounters with death and his survival. But the film is stuffed with subplots — gang rivalries, power struggles, betrayal, complicated love life.

It starts feeling like a restaurant with 100+ items on the menu — but none cooked well. Sadly, Chef Gordon Ramsay isn’t around to fix this kitchen nightmare.

Despite stellar performances — especially Kamal Haasan, an excellent North Indian casting and stunning AI job for the flashback, the story lacks depth. There’s no scope for the audience to connect emotionally.

Too many plot threads. Too fast. None fully explored. You’re left only watching, not feeling.

I enjoyed the banters between Sakthivel & Amaran. But their bond too, felt undercooked. Sakthivel feels an eternal bond with Amaran since he saved the former’s life, but did that kid really have a choice when a full grown adult just picks him up and uses him as a human shield? And given that they are so close now, and Amaran was raised by Sakthivel, is just the fact that the latter doubted Amaran once, enough to shake their entire relationship? That seemed too shallow for what was supposed to be a deep bond. Then there was the angle of Amaran’s father’s death that was used by Manickam to manipulate him, but did his father’s death make sense at all in the first place? Was that to distract the police? But the police had already surrounded them. And why did the father keep distributing newspapers despite seeing the police and clearly figuring something is absolutely off? There are so many logical gaps that these could have been questions on the critical reasoning section of the GMAT exam.

Both Jeeva and Indrani’s characters are well set-up, but I wish there was more for these characters. The way Sakthivel looks for Jeeva from room to room after he’s back from jail & Indrani’s place, is almost adorable. This along with the scene where he’s trying to convince her at Sivaguru’s place — almost prevents you from immediately jumping into conclusion about his relationship with Indrani. At the same time, I loved the chemistry between Sakthivel and Indrani — sensual yet emotionally charged. Would I have felt the same if Trisha wasn’t so beautiful & elegant and Sakthivel wasn’t being played by the charmer, Kamal Hassan? Probably not.

The second half overall seemed pretty flat — what could have been an intellectual cat-and-mouse chase turned into an old-school vanilla revenge story. Also, when Sakthivel is back from the dead, the emotional punch of Amaran’s betrayal seems to be diluted through distributed attention between Amaran and Manickam. It gets a little blurry — was it supposed to be Sakthivel vs Amaran manipulated by Manickam, or Sakthivel vs Manickam powered by Amaran. Another thing to note is why did Sakthivel not get his usual clothes while visiting his daughter & wife or just buy some, but rather travelled to Goa in those interesting ‘Himalayan’ clothes?

The one twist I really appreciated was Anna being Chandra. That was the one & only surprise element for me in the otherwise painfully obvious storyline and the terrace reunion scene was at least somewhat emotionally satisfying. Though I did wonder — was Chandra an athlete? How else did she outrun Inspector Royappa & co for so long to reach the terrace despite entering the building together?

And fortunately, this sibling reunion scene was one of the very few ones where the background score actually helped. Otherwise the BGM was one of my biggest disappointments. I am utterly surprised at how a movie with such beautiful tracks ends up with BGM so intrusive that it pulls you out of the scenes. Sometimes silence would have hit much harder.

I honestly don’t know what let me down the most — the lack of depth in story, the distracting BGM, the multiple missing details of randomly thrown references or that the second half reminded me a lot of Indian 2.