I watched Thug Life and I'm ready for Bug Life

I watched Mani Ratnam’s Thug Life on Netflix this weekend, despite the bad reviews the film had garnered during its theatrical release. My previous career as a film critic has perhaps made me want to watch bad films just to know how bad they could get. That, or I have to go on a psychiatrist’s couch to find out why I’m such a glutton for self-punishment.

Tamil cinema is obsessed with the lives of gangsters. Most directors want to make gangster movies and most male stars want to play gangsters. It is as if the lives of other people don’t matter at all. Even when the hero is a teacher — like Vijay was in Master — he behaves like a gangster. Sometimes, there is a secret agent (who is usually named Ghost) but he becomes a gangster or has to spend most of the film pretending to be a gangster in order to catch gangsters.

Anyway, Thug Life has Kamal Haasan play a gangster named Sakthivel. He is busy pumping bullets into people and slashing their limbs but appears to have time for a smashing hair care routine that is unfortunately not part of the script. Most of the film is Kamal Haasan killing people and his hair swirling around him. Mani Ratnam used to be an ad film director, and I found myself creating a commercial in my mind for these visuals — Killer Shampoo. Death to lice and dandruff.

Simbu plays another gangster. His name is Amaran and he has a ponytail. Amaran and Sakthivel end up fighting each other. It would have made sense if it had been over who has better hair — since that’s the only major detail about these men that we know — but it is about ‘power’ and Indrani.

Indrani (Trisha) is a gangster moll but she might as well have been a nun, considering how staid the character is. Jeeva (Abhirami) is Sakthivel’s wife who has the measured anger of Mani Ratnam heroines. Just enough to appear like they are challenging the patriarchy but ultimately making the audience more comfortable with living through it. Oh, there is also a woman who jumps from a building because of an unwanted pregnancy. The lifespan of a fruit fly is longer than that of these women.

In all this mess, Joju George walks around yelling, “I am PATHHHROOOOSSS!” to anyone who will listen. Actually, a large part of the film is various male characters shouting out their names. “I am RANGARAYA SAKTHIVEL!” , ‘I am AMARAN!” etc. Funnily, these declarations are made to people who already know their names. It is as if they’re all in the class of an unreasonable teacher who takes attendance every 10 minutes.

For some reason, these gangsters go to Nepal. Sakthivel is shot. He falls from a cliff but a tree breaks his fall and he is saved (is it the same altruistic tree from Punnagai Mannan?). There is an avalanche and he still doesn’t die. My mind wandered to possible summer holiday plans. Nepal seems like a good destination because there are strategic boy monks all over the country who will rescue you from avalanches and train you for free in martial arts for a minimum period of two years.

Ashok Selvan is a cop with a handlebar moustache. He has an ex-wife (Aishwarya Lekshmi) who is always hanging around his house with the measured anger of a Mani Ratnam heroine. She is either taking care of her ex-husband’s father or the men in his custody. She is a pediatrician, though. Guddu Bhaiya (Ali Fazal) of Mirzapur fame (which was also about gangsters) is there in Thug Life, too. He also has long hair but that’s all I can tell you about what he was doing in the film.

So in the end what happens? A lot of people die and Sakthivel becomes a farmer. Before the gangster phase, the Tamil film industry was obsessed with farmers. Every film had at least one dialogue about organic farming and one song about farmers. I was phenomenally bored of it but Thug Life made me feel nostalgic for that phase.

Maybe the sequel to Thug Life (because every film now has a Part 1 and Part 2) will be Bug Life, a film that explores Sakthivel’s journey as a farmer who is friends with earthworms and insects in his field. He will still have a village wife with measured anger, chewing betel leaves all day, and a side chick with jasmine in her hair who dies for no reason.