Pushpa 2: The Rule shows him at the peak of his badassery as he takes his illegal business abroad bypassing and bruising a growing number of disgruntled rivals. Written by Sukumar and Srikanth Vissa, the film’s plot barely moves. But the characters do, a lot.
Happily married to Srivalli (Rashmika Mandanna), Pushpa (Allu Arjun) is now a family man. Stubborn and egotistical beyond reason, his megalomania has sky-rocketed unbridled, much like his social and financial stature. When he requests the chief minister for a photo on Srivalli’s bidding but gets rejected, he gets the CM changed. When he doesn’t get the due payment from his Japanese dealers, he travels all the way there in a container for 40 days to settle scores with them.
The sequel opens with this scene but director Sukumar never bothers to conclude it once he’s done with Pushpa’s in-your-face posturing. That’s the problem with the entire film. It is so obsessed with putting Pushpa on a lofty gold pedestal that in its stubborn single-mindedness, it gladly barters all else. If Rohit Shetty’s recent Singham Again was entry shots of seven Bollywood stars parading as a film, Pushpa 2: The Rule is 200 minutes of Allu Arjun in slow-motion galore.
Much like the first chapter, the second too follows a templatised narrative. If that was the origin story, this has Pushpa turning into the dreaded brand that his arch-nemesis Inspector Shekhawat (Fahadh Faasil)—the Tom to his Jerry—once teased him about. Pushpa 2: The Rise is 3 hours 20 minutes of punishing, unadulterated hyperbolism. Sukumar underlines everything—hook steps, messages, motifs, expressions—making sure you don’t just not miss anything but all of it gets seared into your brain like the stamp of Pushpa’s hand.
It throws more of everything that the audience liked in Pushpa: The Rise. Loved the action sequence in the forest in which Pushpa had his face covered and hands tied? Pushpa 2: The Rule has not one but two stand-out banger fight sequences. Brimming with oversaturated colors and unabashed excesses, they play out like lurid, elaborate fever dreams.
The first happens mid Tirupati Gangamma Jatara festivities. The second inside an abandoned fort. Both the times the reason is Pushpa’s step-niece. She is first eve-teased, later abducted. Forever the savior, Pushpa transforms into the all-annihilating goddess, inspiring awe, fear, reducing people to pulp. Much like Pushpa: The Rise, the women in his life continue to be his favorite excuse to go on killing sprees and make new enemies along the way.
Although the money-spinning franchise is a brazen celebration of machismo, its gender politics is not as depraved as Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal. This is how low the fruit has fallen. Pushpa is devoted to his wife and considers her every whim a command. His mother’s, and by extension his, ostracization from his father’s family still haunts him, he is quietly protective of his niece, he wishes for a daughter during the Jatara. And yet, all the women need saving. Despite all her feistiness, we hardly see Srivalli do anything except fawn over her demigod-like husband, cater to his needs, and her ‘peelings’.
But I’ve got to give credit where it’s due. Despite being straddled with a character as inane and unhinged as Pushpa that feels more of a drunken fantasy than an actual person, Allu Arjun commits to the part mind, body, and soul. Both repulsive and charismatic, his gait this time around is heavy with the burden of wearing an uneasy crown. It’s no walk in the park to make a buffoon look like a hero and return to a role that has become a cultural phenomenon. And yet, such is Allu Arjun’s sorcery that he makes it work somehow.
His effortless chemistry with Rashmika Mandanna, with scenes of their conjugal love sprinkled throughout the movie, is the only solace to all the madness and mayhem. The maniacal Pushpa-Shekhawat bromance, their explosive mutual obsession, is another winning factor, but the film is too skewed towards Pushpa to do Shekhawat justice.
The songs of Pushpa: The Rise were crucial in catapulting it to cult status. However, except for Angaaron, the entire music album of the sequel is forgettable. Sreeleela tries hard with Kissik but it’s no match to the upheaval that Samantha Ruth Prabhu caused with the highly incendiary Oo Antava. The absence of an unblemished love song like Srivalli looms large too.
But these are minor grievances compared to how irresponsibly, gleefully the film celebrates, fetishizes violence. I am acutely aware that Pushpa 2: The Rule isn’t the first testosterone-fueled ‘mass-entertainer’ to revel in gore and bloodshed. But when the post credits announced that a third part is in the offing and it will be called Pushpa 3: The Rampage, I couldn’t help but squirm in my seat.
If his rise entailed relentless carnage, I can’t even imagine what rampage would look like. I don’t want to. But there’s no escaping it anymore. Glorification of on-screen violence is not endemic to Telugu cinema alone. It has gripped the entire nation. As I write this, War 2, Animal Park, Don 3, and the Mirzapur movie are getting made. Has trying to solve problems without a gun become a language no one understands anymore? I sincerely hope not.
