Pushpa 2: The Rule Movie Review - Allu ka paratha

A still from Pushpa 2: The Rule

Movie: Pushpa 2: The Rule
U/A: Action thriller
Dir: Sukumar
Cast: Allu Arjun, Fahadh Faasil, Rashmika Mandanna

The first five to 10 minutes of Pushpa 2 is in Japanese. With Hindi subtitles, in small Devanagari letters.

This is how Pushpa, that is ‘Icon Star' Allu Arjun, makes his first entry - hung upside down to a crane, in a container terminal - talking Japanese that, he says, he's learnt from mugging up a language manual.

What follows are the ‘money shots', namely action sequences, pounding Japs by their jaws. Money shots mainly being the point of this movie, of course. And there are quite a few decent ones, actually.

For instance, a fleet of trucks carrying red sandalwood wading through a riverine route. Or that bit where Pushpa bashes up the usual, dentally challenged, badly dressed baddies, in an aerobatic fight scene, with his legs and hands tied up.

Let alone the usual line of vehicles, right from bullock-cart caravans to the helicopter, assembled for majestic effect. The work of Polish cinematographer Mirosław Kuba Brożek, on a uniformly semi-dark, colourful palette, can't be ignored.

These non-sequitur money shots are obviously there, because the money is. Given this Telugu film's earthy, rustic prequel had turned out to be a miraculous sleeper success, across the country, in 2021.

Making Hyderabad (after the two Baahubalis) a theatrical epicentre of sorts, for a ‘pan-India' earthquake. Unsurprisingly, all the conversations around this Pushpa, in particular, is going to be about collections and commerce as well.

The only economic theory the filmmakers could have gained from, though, is the one on diminishing marginal utility.

That is, the value of a money shot progressively declines, if all sequences are an attempt at a climax. Each gesture, a style statement for the propped-up hero, who makes a grand re-entry, after another entry, with every bloody moment, that he's on screen - post that Japanese mumbo-jumbo in the cargo lot, of course.

Forever anticipating the audience's applause. Just don't push it na, Pushpa? Exhaustion sets in. Have my eyes to the exit door. But, no, must stay.

There's a reason I'm here. Among others, firstly, Fahadh Faasil - everybody's favourite Malayalam star, in a Telugu event picture, playing a baldie, Rajasthani cop Shekhawat, speaking in a rustic semi-Haryanvi twang.

Those who loved Fahadh in Aavesham would've been particularly primed up for another boisterous act. As promised in the first Pushpa, where he entered late, suggesting he'll stay for longer in the second. He does.

This pic starts off and for a fair bit smartly stays its course, as a relentless cop and chor/thief chase. Pushpa/Allu is, of course, the prototype of the angry young anti-hero, that we've seen a few since.

As a God-like sandalwood smuggler, perhaps modelled on Veerappan, Pushpa plays his cards well, inevitably outsmarting his OG nemesis, i.e. Shekhawat, while taking the pants off politicians.

These parts are actually fun. I don't know if this is what the filmmakers set out to make. My eyes haven't wavered from the screen yet. Quite alert, TBH.

And yet, did I miss something? At some point, Pushpa 2 wholly segues into another film altogether - about the abduction of the hero's niece. Fahadh, for no reason, has disappeared. As have the cops.

One song/dance routine follows another, before a tight fight, with Allu's strange obsession with cross-dressing in sarees taking over. Of course, he continues to beat humans to pulp. But I'm sorry, what's happening again?

Is there any other picture, whose beginning has no relation to its middle, and the end - which feels so far away, that even as the script had no point/purpose anyway, the film carries on with the end-credits rolling at such top speed, that the others who've worked on it simply don't matter.

I walked in at 12.30 pm. It's 4.15. Pushpa 2 is still on. What're we left with then, but Allu ka paratha - flat, burnt out, battered; just like my brain.

May as well just fawningly observe this unlikely hero then - fully bejewelled around wrists, neck, with long, red-nail jutting out of his pinky finger.

He's deliberately unkempt, even when attempting some sorta style. With one shoulder awkwardly raised, he pouts, when he talks, as if there's paan in his mouth, even where there isn't, weirdly rolling his tongue…

Now, I understand Allu, like Telugu blockbusters itself, can be an acquired taste. No knock on public tastes. Fire, or flower? Depends, if you're a follower.

In fact, I'm happy to be in a half-packed hall - having rightly skipped the press preview plus samosa, that movie critics often get disparaged in social media, for selling their soul for a frickin' free snack!

The crowd in my hall has showed up on a Thursday/workday afternoon. I'm guessing they're in it for some desi 1980s style mad actioner.

Pushpa 2 is evidently set in the late '90s, with Nokia Communicator and Motorola Razr as cellphones of choice, cameras with Kodak rolls, Pajero for preferred SUV, and Vat 69 as the on-screen whisky.

Got it. No issues travelling back in time. But, how I do I retrieve the last four hours of my life, yo?

Rating: 1.5/5