Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam are seasoned crossover artists, having working beyond the Tamil language film industry for much of their careers (Haasan longer than Ratnam). Thus it was fitting that Haasan and Ratnam included Mumbai as a pit stop for the promotions of their new collaboration, Thug Life.
The crime drama will be released on June 5 in cinemas in Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada. The film’s trailer identifies Haasan as Rangaraaya Sakthivel, who adopts the orphan Amaran (Silambarasan).
The trailer suggests that Amaran turns against Rangaraaya, setting up a battle with him as well as other characters played by Nasser, Joju George and Mahesh Manjrekar. Abhirami, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Trisha Krishnan, Ashok Selvan and Sanya Malhotra also star in the film, which will be released in regular and 2D Imax formats.
“The film isn’t all about action, there is a lot of emotion too,” Haasan said during a press meet on Thursday in Mumbai. The title was among several suggested by Haasan, Ratnam added.
“Thug Life is actually an emotional drama within the world of crime,” Ratnam said. “With a title like this, there will be action but it has to have the right emotional feel. You can give it a lyrical form because masters like Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa have shown that action can be lyrical too.”
Thug Life marks the first collaboration between Haasan and Ratnam since Nayakan (1987). The only other time Haasan was involved with a Mani Ratnam project was to loan his voice to the opening credits of Ratnam’s two-parter Ponniyin Selvan (2002 and 2023).
The duo, who are related through marriage – Ratnam’s spouse, the noted actor Suhasini, is Haasan’s niece – have also collaborated on Thug Life’s screenplay. “The scale of the film has been designed according to the demands of the story,” Ratnam said. “What makes my job easy is having the right cast and crew.”
Ratnam has teamed up again with his frequent collaborators, including cinematographer Ravi K Chandran and editor Sreekar Prasad. AR Rahman has composed the soundtrack, which includes the songs Jinguchaa and Sugar Baby.
At the event in Mumbai, Rahman, Abhirami, Trisha Krishnan, Silambarasan and Ashok Selvan were present too. Abhirami praised the “holy trifecta” of talent – Haasan, Ratnam and Rahman – that had come together for Thug Life.
“I will forgo anything to work with them even for a day,” Abhirami said. “It is a dream come true to have even a small chat with Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam, more so the opportunity to work with them,” Selvan added.
Silambarasan, who previously starred in Ratnam’s crime drama Chekka Chivantha Vaanam (2018), said that the energy created by the Haasan-Ratnam pairing was inspiring.
“I was nervous since it was the first time I was sharing the screen with Kamal sir, but Mani sir made me comfortable and said, just do that you have to do,” Silambarasan said. “I haven’t played a character [like Amaran] before. The character has a kind of pain, which was difficult to maintain.”
Trisha Krishnan said Ratnam asked her to “unlearn everything” she had done in Ponniyin Selvan, in which she played a key role. “Having grown up watching Nayakan, I was curious about what they would be like on the sets,” Krishnan said. “Kamal sir and Mani sir were in total sync with each other. As actors, we had to stop staring at them and work hard too.”
Even before they were linked through marriage, Haasan and Ratnam knew each other socially, Haasan said. “We were living in the same area, and I didn’t know at the time that he belonged to a film family,” Haasan recalled. (Ratnam’s father, S Gopalaratnam, was a film distributor, while Ratnam’s uncle, Krishnamurthy, produced Tamil films.)
“We would talk about cinema all the time,” Haasan said. “When we were shooting Nayakan in Bombay, Ramesh Sippy was shooting another film, and we visited him. We were cinema buffs, and we would go to sets to watch other people work.”
Ratnam recalled having watched Haasan rehearse the famous climax scene from Balu Mahendra’s Moondram Pirai (1982, remade in Hindi as Sadma in 1983). “Kamal was equally involved in Nayakan – he contributed to the film in so many ways. He adds value to a scene in such a way that you can see it grow in front of your eyes.”
A lot is riding on Thug Life, which is a co-production between Haasan’s Raaj Kamal Films International, Ratnam’s Madras Talkies and Udayanidhi Stalin’s Red Giant Movies. “I am not feeling the pressure of the box office – we have to look at least at breaking even,” Haasan said. “You can’t disrespect the business.”
Thug Life is a “Zen-Z film,” Ratnam jokingly said in response to a question about whether the movie was consciously trying to appeal to Gen Z viewers.
