ACTION; 1hr 42min
STARRING: Peter Dinklage, Kevin Bacon, Elijah Wood, Jacob Tremblay, Luisa Guerreiro
Rough justice: Toxie
St Roma’s Village — St Roma, as in Troma Entertainment, birthplace of Toxicity — is hell on earth, with the rabidly corrupt chemical corporation BTH poisoning and polluting everything in sight. Writer-director Macon Blair (I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore) goes to town and back on this gloomscape in his remake of Troma’s 1984 Avenger original, with a frenetic mood board for its OTT archetypes to play on and a conquering anti-hero every underdog can root for.
That outcast lionheart would be BTH janitor Winston Gooze (a commendably serious Dinklage). As a widower with a sad young son (Tremblay), a terminal brain disease that has left him with 12 months to live, zero funds in the bank and insufficient company health cover for the exorbitant drugs that might have helped his tragic case, Mr Gooze has every card in the deck stacked against him.
After a direct appeal to diabolical BTH CEO Bob Garbinger (Bacon, loving every loony minute), washes up as an abject failure, Winston, in what has to be the worst night of his miserable life, is dunked into a vat of toxic waste, emerging grotesquely mutated. Voiced by Dinklage, embodied by Guerreiro, Toxie, as the media gleefully dubs him, is a bulbous, gelatinous, lime-tinted freak. He bleeds electric-blue gunk but on the upside is unkillable, which comes in handy with BTH goons (keep your eyes peeled for an unrecognisable Wood) hot on his rubbery heels.
Yet despite the deranged ultra-violence that Toxie and his radioactive mop inflict on BTH malfeasants, the well-meaning everyman beneath the misshapen face just wants to set matters right. To that noble end, his climactic duel is retribution on steroids — strong meat for the squeamish, but never a dull moment for everybody else.
