'Pushpa 2: The Rule' Movie Review: Allu Arjun's Raging WildFire Gets Doused As Mass Turns Into Melodrama

Director: Sukumar 
Writer: Sukumar
Cast: Allu Arjun, Rashmika Mandanna, Fahadh Faasil, Jagapati Babu, Sunil, Anasuya Bhardwaj, Rao Ramesh, Sreeleela
Language: Tamil (dubbed)

Sukumar, the writer-director of the Pushpa franchise, is something of a genius when it comes to staging setups and their rewarding payoffs. At certain points in Pushpa 2, you sense how he’s working towards a series of payoffs, some that were set-up in the earlier portions of the first film, which is set 20 years before the events of the sequel. At other points, the payoffs are immediate, giving these scenes an elegant beginning, middle and an end that is so good, they can be developed into standalone short films capable of amassing millions of views.

My favourite is the long interval scene, which involves Pushpa (Allu Arjun) having to apologise to his nemesis SP Bhanwar Singh Shekhawat (Fahadh Faasil). They are both equally eccentric and unapologetically unhinged. What raises the stakes (and wildness) of this exchange is that they are both drunk and exceedingly egoistic. They both arrive at a stipulated venue for this apology, and when Pushpa concedes to Shekhawat for the sake of his business, Shekhawat slyly pulls out a music system to record him saying sorry, which he then promptly replays as though it’s music to his ears.

It’s a wild swing that could have easily been fodder for embarrassment. Yet the conviction with which these two stellar performers pull this off, along with the way this recording is replayed during crucial moments, makes for the spiciest brand of masala you’re likely to taste this year. These are not people who can be bought with money or power; the only language they speak is what feeds their ego.

You'll experience the same effect during another brilliant setup-payoff, in the form of a photograph Sreevalli (Rashmika Mandanna) wants. When Pushpa leaves for a meeting with the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, she requests him to return with a picture of him standing next to the CM, purely for the bragging rights. But when it’s time for the photo to be clicked, the CM refuses and says,“I’m more comfortable because I wear these slippers, but that doesn’t mean I will take a picture with me holding them up, proudly.”

What began as a silly request from a doting wife sets off an international chain of events you’d have to see to believe. It takes almost three-fourths of a very long movie to finally deliver the full satisfaction of what Sukumar was setting up, but when he gets there, it’s a moment worth framing.

It is the CM’s insult, comparing Pushpa to a pair of slippers, that sets the stage for nationwide pandemonium. And it’s the insults that eventually make the Pushpa franchise what it is because these films are about extremely arrogant characters and their self-destructive games of upmanship.

As a part of the aforementioned apology, Pushpa explains how he’d be more than willing to apologise if he were actually dealing with someone with integrity like DSP Govindappa (Shatru) from the first film. But that’s not the sort of people Pushpa is messing with now, with each just as crooked as the last. The stakes are bigger, but can Pushpa remain as invincible as he was in the first film?

This, perhaps, was the question Sukumar too wanted to answer with a more emotional sequel. Despite a whole host of formidable villains (a dozen of them) working against Pushpa, you get the idea pretty early on that there’s nothing that will stop him. So if they were to set up obstacles along his path, he’d find another brilliant way to transport red sandalwood logs past them. And if they were to assemble an army of fighters against him, he’d simply find another way to ruin them, even if his hands and legs were tied.

His only vulnerable side is exposed when it comes to family, like it was in the first film. Born out of wedlock, we’re led to believe Pushpa became who he is as a result of the trauma he faced as a boy for not having a father figure. But in the process of turning a God-like anti-hero into a broken human being, the film itself gets broken into pieces, indistinguishable from what it was.

The resulting genre shift is so drastic and jarring that you feel like you've entered the wrong screen after the interval. Moments of brilliant masala are abandoned entirely in pursuit of a weak sub-plot, just to bring back Pushpa’s need to feel like he belongs. We get shockingly strange statements, including Pushpa’s desire to have a daughter, but not because he believes in doing his bit for beti bachao. He simply wants to marry her off to a family that will give her the official surname that he cannot.

It’s one of the many missteps that the film cannot recover from. The excellent battle of egos, which had threatened to destroy every major character, gets abandoned too as inconsequential characters keep getting introduced, further diluting the legacy of the first film.

Perhaps the point itself was to show Pushpa, the fire, turning into some sort of a flower with age and fatherhood. The idea might have also been to go beyond the game of one-upmanship to give Pushpa an interiority with the fears that come with responsibility. But in the attempt to create a balance between a man who knows no fear and the family man he has now become, we’re left with a film that is neither flower nor fire.