When ruthlessness met a human heart
There is a certain cruelty to a title like Straight Ruthless. It signals a kind of hardness, a realm devoid of tenderness. Yet, what the film delivers is a study of how the circumstances of life can sharpen a person into a blade, while at the same time, how the human spirit can be forged in such a way and find pockets of light, small and luminous, to let the light in. The lead characters, played with quiet ferocity by actors who, at first glance, seem to be opposites, are, in fact, two halves of the same bruise. The characters have had their lives pared down by necessity, a painful testament to the ordinary causes of extraordinary survival. To be in their presence is to bear witness.
How the story unfolds
At its simplest, Straight Ruthless follows Maya, a woman whose life has crystallized around a single choice, and Arjun, a man who has learned to survive by shedding softness. The film begins in media res — Maya, once a teacher, now runs an underground courier operation moving people and information past the state’s bureaucratic choke points. Arjun, who has drifted through odd jobs and one long stretch in prison for a crime he claims he did not commit, becomes both her muscle and her conscience. Their partnership is transactional at first: food, shelter, protection. But the film spends most of its time in those smaller moments — the way Maya hums an old lullaby when she thinks no one is listening, the way Arjun folds his hands in temples he no longer believes in.
The narrative pivots around a key moral conflict. A child shows up with an older storyline containing politics the protagonists want to stay away from. Extending a helping hand for the child could potentially expose an entire network, while not helping goes against every quiet, little remnant of decency the characters hold. The tension doesn’t peak, for example, during a dramatic rooftop shootout, but during an endurance test of trust. Can two hardened people keep their humanity when the system demands their ruthlessness?
The actors’ lives echo the roles — in half-truths and whole memories
Off-screen history aligning with the roles actors play brings a special sort of pleasure. The film’s lead actress, which in public accounts we’ll call R., hails from a small town where jobs were not only rare, but also the choice of art could garner family dissaproval. Like Maya, R. learned early to maneuver around the space where those early years, long and thoughtful walks back from college, would show. When an actor’s purse is small and their questions many, it shows. It shows in the economy of motion and the waiting room eyes. It is for this economy, that R. is able to make silence loud, and silence is what makes R. astonishing as Maya.
A.’s performance has taken on different weight. Before the film, A.’s public footprint suggested he would fill supporting roles and he was known for painstakingly preparing. Outside of films, A. has talked about the experience of having a single headline misrepresenting him and having to live with the fallout; this tick of public persona has certainly made him careful. In Straight Ruthless, this transfers to Arjun’s careful inability to say everything. There’s a scene where Arjun returns a cup of tea without touching it; the small refusal is weighted because A. channels a lifetime of micro-survivals — the tiny, necessary denials that people use to keep going.
Little things that made performances sing
On the sets of a film, one can often discern the value of small rituals that help uncover the truth of a film. It is said that for a week, the director made the cast live in a guest house without phones, made them cook their own meals, and forced them to share their life narratives. Whether that week happened exactly as told or not, the result is undeniable: the actors’ chemistry is brilliant. They genuinely feel like a group of people who have shared a life to some extent. Another behind-the-scenes note that is repeatedly shared and that fits the film’s realist ethos is that many of the props were gathered from actual community centres and shelters. Production chose not to use glossy, polished set dressing. Those choices were significant. When R. and A. pick up a chipped mug and pass it between them, the audience believes they are passing something that has been held, warmed, and then dropped. This small detail sustains the larger drama.
Somewhat obscure in the shaping of the performances was the hiring of a local theatre coach who trained the cast on silence. The coach had actors in the silence of a room and asked them to reenact a recent injury with pantomime and gestures. The results are visible on screen — there are long passages where the performers are communicating and conveying meaning while the lines are silence. In India, we have a tradition of saying more with the eyes than the mouth; Ruthless Straight borrows that idea and modernises it.
Why the film matters now — emotional and cultural recurrences
Cinema possesses the ability to evoke various interpretations and emotions based on the context, time and space in which it is viewed. Straight Ruthless, in particular, appears to be made for a time we are experiencing. In contemporary, audience-watching spaces, where sensory overload is the primary expectation, the film’s persistent silence appears as a courageous counter spectacle. The film’s cultural message has to do with the social easing of the audience’s gaze on the ‘criminal’, on the ‘hustler’, on the ‘refugee’, on the ‘absent parent’. With the deep politicisation of everyday social relations, the film’s commentary on the small moral economies is of urgent relevance today.
The emotional impact of the film remains with us because it allows us to cheer for imperfect characters. As far back as Indian village storytelling, heroes have been complex and imperfect. Straight Ruthless is part of this tradition, delivering complex storytelling with a stark modernity. There is no cathartic song and dance to exit with; just a stubborn ache and a lingering hope for a parched life to find some moisture.
The invisible hands that shaped the film.
A few other details, some confirmed and some resulting from on-set gossip, provide the explanation for the lived-in quality of the performances. The production took an unusual amount of time for casting because the director was looking for people from the neighbourhood who had the walked and the mannerisms of the world he wanted to portray. A lead tailor was said to have adjusted the costumes every day to reflect a workingman’s clothes, to reflect wear and sweat rather than fashionable. There is also talk of one improvised take that made it into final cut, where Maya sees a stray dog and for a moment, becomes a child again, and this reveals something that the screenplay only suggested.
A Slight, Honest Aftertaste
Straight Ruthless doesn’t seek to claim to dispel the world’s inequalities, but it does assert a meaningful one: tough stories need some tenderness. The main actors, whether their life stories literally match the plot or only in essence do, share performances that are not so much about the display of life’s brutalities, but the sheer act of endurance amid that brutal existence. This is the film’s quiet, stubborn gift — and the reason it lingers long after the house lights are turned on.
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