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Opinion What happens when a classic director chases the reels generation? The answer is Mani Ratnam’s ‘Thug Life’

More "reel" than film, in chasing today’s blockbuster formula, the director loses the soul that once defined his cinema

June 11, 2025 06:24 PM IST First published on: Jun 11, 2025 at 02:16 PM IST

Filmmaker Mani Ratnam and actor Kamal Haasan collaborated last for Nayakan in 1987. The film was a blockbuster and continues to remain a high point in both their careers. Though Nayakan was heavily borrowed from Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather (1972), the performances, music and visual style allowed it to carve an iconic space in Tamil film history. And it continues to influence young filmmakers in various ways until now. So when the filmmaker and actor announced their coming together after 37 years, there was immense expectation for their new film Thug Life. However, post the very first show, the film has been uniformly panned by both critics and audiences. Ratnam’s films were once inspired by Hollywood and Japanese cinema. But Thug Life shockingly comes across as a poor imitation of a Lokesh Kanagaraj film.

There might have been a time in the past when it was enjoyable to indulge in a philosophical banter over whether cinema imitates life or life imitates cinema. But that debate is officially extinct today. Today, we wonder if cinema imitates YouTube videos or Instagram reels. Going by the attention span of the audience that has consistently been dropping, it is quite clear that the reels format is winning this game.

In an effort to nail the blockbuster, young filmmakers like Kanagaraj (Vikram, 2022), Karthik Subbaraj (Retro, 2025), Nelson Dilipkumar (Jailer, 2023) and Adhik Ravichandran (Good Bad Ugly, 2025) are increasingly making films that resemble a compilation of unrelated Insta reels — but each delivering an adrenaline punch. In the process, storytelling, character development, narrative progression and emotional connection are all gladly sacrificed to keep the audience engaged at every moment.

This is achieved through recurring sequences of extreme violence, action and bloodshed, adrenaline-filled, often illogical, twists and turns in the narrative, reusing iconic Ilaiyaraaja or Deva’s songs from the ’80s and ’90s, hat-tipping moments from old classic films of the same male star and a post-climax surprise scene that should mandatorily hint at a potential sequel.

So, instead of narrating a story that gradually builds to the climax, what we witness is a series of climaxes. This is the equivalent of doing away with a five-course meal and replacing every course with different desserts for a sugar rush. While this often tends to exhaust the audience by the end of the film, it does help in keeping them completely engaged throughout its running time.
In his effort to compete with contemporary filmmakers, Mani Ratnam has chosen to make an anti-Mani Ratnam film this time. While he was lauded in the past for exhibiting his mastery over the amalgamation of light, sound and emotion, he has chosen to do away with it in Thug Life. Instead, he has attempted to make a reel-collage film.

Also Read | Revisiting Mani Ratnam and Kamal Haasan’s Nayakan, not as a gangster epic, but as an existential melodrama in disguise

However, Thug Life proves that the filmmaker is still caught up in the old world of emotion and drama and might not be fully convinced by the new kind of filmmaking. In particular, he doesn’t seem to relish violence or going over-the-top as much as contemporary filmmakers do. So, in trying to find a balance between the old-world emotional drama and the new-world adrenaline rush, his new film lands neither here nor there. It completely lacks emotional connection, but at the same time, the filmmaker’s understatedness fails to offer the thrills of an over-the-top film.

While it might be considered blasphemy to make this comparison, when one contrasts Thug Life with Ravichandran’s Good Bad Ugly, it is evident why the former failed with the audience. Ravichandran’s film was unabashed in its quest to thrill the audience. It willingly buries story and emotion under the deep ocean and focuses primarily on being deliciously over-the-top. It managed to create both a charm and an element of irony where it both hero-worshipped and parodied its male star. Unfortunately, Mani Ratnam’s film has no such takeaway. Instead, in its greedy effort to have the cake and eat it too, it falls flat.

The writer is a Chennai-based filmmaker