Sunlight on the sand, cartel accounting three streets back from the water. Toxic plants its gangster story on the Indian coast in the last years of Portuguese colonial rule, with an empire folding up its paperwork and the men who move drugs arguing over who inherits the space it leaves.

Geetu Mohandas directs, and Yash takes a dual role in a cast stacked with leads rather than ornaments: Kiara Advani, Nayanthara, Huma Qureshi, Tara Sutaria and Rukmini Vasanth. Venkat K. Narayana produces through KVN Productions alongside Yash's own Monster Mind Creations, on a reported budget of 800 to 850 crore rupees. That figure would make this the most expensive Indian film yet mounted, and the period setting is where the money tends to show: colonial-era streets, cars, tailoring, coastline.

The genre mix runs action, crime and drama with comedy folded in, so the tone sits closer to swagger than to grim procedural. The subtitle, A Fairy Tale for Grown-ups, sets the terms honestly enough. Expect a folk-tale shape wrapped around an underworld power struggle, told at a scale Indian cinema has not attempted before.