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Lazy and incoherent, ‘Pushpa 2: The Rule’ lacks the rowdy conviction of the first film
We're a minute into Pushpa 2: The Rule and the guy to my right is panicking. "Are they speaking in Tamil?" he asks. I assure him the yakuza on screen aren't speaking Tamil, or the film's actual language, Telugu. He doesn't seem convinced, and only relaxes when an Indian character turns up and speaks in (dubbed) Hindi. This is why true pan-India filmmaking will remain a pipe dream. To a viewer in Delhi, Telugu is as foreign as Japanese.
Not that Pushpa 2 is a pan-India film. It’s barely any kind of film at all. Pushpa: The Rise (2021) was a bludgeoning Neanderthal blockbuster, made with absolute conviction. The sequel is a witless carcass dragged across 200 minutes, a monument to greed in how it resists any identity besides being the middle entry in a trilogy.
It picks up pretty much where the first film ended: sandalwood smuggler Pushpa Raj (Allu Arjun) is now a serious powerbroker, operating out of Chittoor but sending shockwaves that register in Delhi, especially his backing of Bhumireddy Naidu (Rao Ramesh) for chief minister. The yakuza episode is an early indication that his ambitions aren’t just national but global. But writer-director Sukumar never gets around to tying Pushpa’s expanding horizons to India’s rapid globalization in the '90s.
SP Shekhawat (Fahadh Faasil), meanwhile, is losing his grip. The cop’s humiliation at the end of the first film, when Pushpa forces him to strip at gunpoint, has made him so thirsty for revenge that he can’t think straight. Like Wile E. Coyote, his pursuit of a cheeky Roadrunner is foiled by increasingly outlandish schemes that reveal themselves at the seeming moment of victory.
Bald, twitchy and constantly frustrated, he’s a rather ridiculous antagonist, Faasil going as broad as his conscience will allow him. Which is still a sight better than Arjun’s slurring, slouching, grimacing lead turn, made worse by having to watch the Marathi-infused Hindi dub (there were no subtitled shows in Telugu in the city).
The last 80 minutes or so is one of the most incredible acts of capitulation I can think of in recent Indian cinema. Until then, Pushpa’s story has at least limped forward. But Sukumar must have realized he needed material for a third instalment (could there be more?). And so he sends his film down a by-lane, a flagrant bit of nonsense involving Pushpa’s niece being harassed. This becomes an excuse for an action sequence, two musical numbers, a kidnapping, some family drama and another extended fight. Smuggling disappears entirely from the film, and so does any sense of narrative momentum.
Like the first film—and much of popular Telugu cinema—Pushpa 2 is obsessed with ideas of masculinity. This takes familiar forms (Rashmika Mandanna's worshipful wife, near-rape as a plot catalyst), but also leads the film into curious areas. The idea of stripping in front of other men as the ultimate humiliation is revisited; this time Shekhawat is the one calling for it. But Shekhawat is also humiliated by Dakshayani (Anasuya Bharadwaj), a butch lady who repeatedly questions both his and her husband’s manliness.
Pushpa sports a conspicuous pink fingernail and, out of nowhere, dons a sari and performs a ritual dance, then goes on to beat up would-be rapists also clad in saris. Later on, he’s tied up and forced to wear a sari again by what seem to be queer-coded thugs. He retaliates by leaping from one to the next, biting their necks. What it all means is anyone’s guess, but it’s amusing to see the film unleash energies it has to no clue how to address.
With a lot of Telugu blockbusters, the action is the point; everything else can be endured if it works. Pushpa 2 has a few scattered moments. The standoff with the yakuza on the docks is a good novelty number, and the sari scrimmage is flamboyantly weird. But Arjun is no Prabhas or Jr NTR, and Sukumar’s set pieces, with their wonky CGI, aren’t in the league of Salaar and Devara, let alone Rajamouli.
There are elisions and shortcuts and moments of pure laziness. A high-speed chase is unfolding on the wide open sea, then suddenly two coastguard boats are in the way. Pushpa references Doraemon, which first aired here in 2005. There’s the five minutes following the director’s credit, which feel like a gag that never arrives. A major character dies and no one even mentions it. You can call it mass filmmaking or anything else, but what it comes down to is a fundamental lack of respect for the viewer.
