Thug Life

Rangaraya Sakthivel, Kamal Haasan is first seen in a sunlit green field, standing firm in a quiet, almost ritual confrontation. He speaks in terms of fate and power, a man who has carried a brutal past since childhood—the moment when Lord Yama took his mother, a wound that pushed him toward becoming a feared, lone force inside a sprawling underworld. The opening image sets the tone for a sprawling saga of loyalty, betrayal, and vengeance threaded through decades.

In 1994, Old Delhi becomes the crucible where two rival clans collide. The elder gang lord, Sadanand Yadav, Mahesh Manjrekar, arrives to broker a fragile truce with his rivals, including Rangaraya “Manickam” Manickavel, Nassar, and his younger brother and co-leader Rangaraya “Sakthi” Sakthivel, Silambarasan TR. The plan seems straightforward: a quiet peace after years of bloodshed. Yet behind the scenes, Sadanand engineers a deadly ruse, triggering a shootout that pulls Delhi Police into the crossfire. In the chaos, a newspaper deliveryman, Muthuraman, is killed, his death a tragic accident that touches two young lives—Amaran (the future leader of a new generation) and Chandra, who are torn from each other in the ensuing melee. Sakthivel believes Amaran shielded him during the mayhem, and in a bold, redemptive move, he adopts Amaran, raises him as his own, and promises to find Chandra, while vowing that the guns will fall silent.

Years later, the world has shifted. In 2016, the daughter of the rival camp, Shanthi, dies by suicide after a bitter, disingenuous manipulation by Ranvijay Yadav, also known as Raanu, Raanu, Rohit Saraf. The senseless tragedy fuels another cycle of revenge. Amaran, now a force to be reckoned with, tracks down Ranvijay, and Sakthivel, in a bid to protect his empire, ends up imprisoned after a brutal confrontation in which Amaran plays a central role. Inside the prison, Sakthivel’s longtime mistress Indrani, Trisha Krishnan visits, offering a glimmer of human connection amid the brutal politics. Sakthivel’s world begins to tilt as the lines between father and son blur, and Indrani’s presence hints at old debts that will shape the road ahead.

A tentative peace appears possible when Sadanand, facing uneasy times, stages a political pivot. He proposes a new plan: Sadanand will enter politics and cede control of the criminal territories to Amaran, who now seeks a different kind of stability under Sakthivel’s watchful eye. Though initially reluctant, Sakthivel agrees, believing the arrangement could finally halt the endless cycle of violence and bring some measure of peace to the families caught in the crossfire. Amaran argues that this is the only path to silence the guns, and with that, a fragile order is restored as Sakthivel is released from prison.

Back home, Mangai, Sakthivel’s daughter, is in love with Naaga, a member of a rival henchman clan, setting a matriarchal pressure point on the elder leader. Mangai pleads with Amaran to marry Naaga before Sakthivel resurfaces, knowing that family alliances could either secure the future or sow new seeds of discord. When Sakthivel returns and watches his family, he sees something shifting—his own son’s presence is no longer a simple inheritance but a nervous balancing act that could topple him from his throne.

At the wedding, the banquet of loyalties reveals new fractures. Amaran meets Indrani for the first time, and Amaran confesses his feelings, only to be met with Indrani’s cool rebuff. The fragile bonds begin to crack as an old enemy resurfaces: Deepak, Ali Fazal plays Deepak, a brother of Ranvijay who seeks vengeance against Sakthivel. While traveling with his gang, Sakthivel narrowly survives an assassination attempt by Deepak’s henchmen, and the encounter brings inspector Jai Royappa / Jai, Ashok Selvan into the frame, a cop who will probe the deeper webs of the gang war and the truth behind the 1994 shootout.

Suspicion becomes silence when Sakthivel notices Amaran’s absence during the attack, prompting a crisis of trust. Jeeva, Sakthivel’s wife, reveals a painful truth: Amaran was with them at the time, and Mangai was pregnant but lost the child in a miscarriage. The revelation strains the already fraught family dynamics, and Sakthivel’s suspicions grow into paranoia as Anburaj, Bagavathi Perumal](/actor/bavagathi-perumal), Kahlua Arjun Chidambaram, and Pathrose Joju George—the allies he once trusted—begin to fear his increasing interference and consider overthrow.

They manipulate Amaran, feeding him a lie that Sakthivel killed his own father in the fateful 1994 shootout, and a dramatic rift opens between the two men. Believing the conspiracy, Amaran joins the plot to unseat his supposed father figure. The conspirators travel to Hilsa, Nepal, on a treacherous path toward Mount Kailash, while Sakthivel, still beneath their sway, finds himself betrayed in the most elemental of ways: Amaran throws him off a cliff, and the gang proclaims Amaran as the new Sakthivel. Yet fate intervenes once more—Sakthivel survives the fall and retreats to a Buddhist monastery, his body and mind slowly recalibrating after the trauma.

Two years pass, and Sakthivel returns to Delhi with newly acquired martial discipline shaped by Nepali monks. He learns that Jeeva has suffered memory loss from the shock and fear surrounding his supposed death, leaving her unable to remember him. This memory fracture adds another layer to Sakthivel’s fierce resolve as he heads to Tiruchendur, where Jeeva and Mangai now live, hoping to rekindle the old flame and seek justice for the betrayals.

What follows is a ruthless campaign of retribution. Sakthivel eliminates Anburaj, by forcing his head toward a rotor on a helicopter; Pathrose meets a similarly brutal fate at the edge of a running train; Manickam is shot and pushed off a bridge. Only Amaran and Kahlua remain, with Kahlua choosing to surrender and act as a spy. Amaran soon discovers the betrayal and eliminates Kahlua, tightening Sakthivel’s sense that the old guard must fall.

A key alliance forms with inspector Jai Royappa, who strikes a grim bargain: Sakthivel will share political and business leverage with Jai to expose corruption, and in return, Jai will permit Sakthivel to kill Amaran. Meanwhile, Sadanand Yadav dies, and Deepak returns to Delhi to assume control of the political-criminal empire. Deepak, with ruthless calculation, targets Indrani, now aligned with Amaran, in a controlled bomb blast that devastates both Sakthivel and Amaran. While trying to save Indrani, Sakthivel is injured in a collapse that brings Dr. Anna—revealed as Amaran’s long-lost sister, Chandra—into the frame, introducing a long-awaited familial reunion into the blood-drenched plot.

Sakthivel summons Amaran to the site of the original shootout, where the two face off in a fierce, highly personal duel. In the heat of the confrontation, Sakthivel convinces Amaran that he was not responsible for his father’s death, and Chandra arrives with Jai, having tracked her brother’s whereabouts. The reunion is at once hopeful and heartbreaking, as the siblings begin to bridge a missing century of pain. But Deepak interrupts with a fatal shot aimed at Amaran. Sakthivel sacrifices himself to shield Amaran, killing Deepak, and tries to revive him, but Amaran dies with his lingering last words—“My little Chandra.” The moment crystallizes the tragedy that has hunted Sakthivel his entire life.

In the wake of Amaran’s death, Sakthivel reflects on a lifetime of loss—the killing of his mother at birth, the betrayal of his elder brother, and now the death of a son who had come to see him as a father. The film closes on a quieter, more intimate note: years later, Sakthivel, now a farmer in the same field, lives with Jeeva (who still does not recognize him), Mangai, and their young grandson. The village breathes a gentle peace, and in a final, affectionate moment, Jeeva calls her grandson “Dei Sakthivel”—a tender echo of the elder man who once ruled this world with fear and power, and who now rests in a softer, quieter love.

“My little Chandra.”

Last Updated: October 01, 2025 at 12:51