Around three-quarters of the way through the prodigious length of Pushpa 2: The Rule, Pushpa’s spirited wife Srivalli (Rashmika Mandanna) reminds a crowd that her husband “is not just a man; he is a brand.” These are the truest words spoken in this unabashedly commercial film, which takes up from where Pushpa: The Rise (2021) finished. The story of a humble laborer turned international smuggling kingpin, the first Pushpa became the biggest Telugu blockbuster ever. Pushpa 2 is more massive, more extreme, more expensive and longer. Hugely anticipated, it was smashing box office records even before it opened.
Critics are split on its virtues, but, as the hero is fond of saying, Pushpa rules, and so the film thrives in a world of its own making; the plot is weak and confusing in the details, and the characters are thin or just plain ridiculous — for example, Pushpa’s would-be nemesis is his police pursuer, Bhanwar Singh Shekhawat (Fahadh Faasil), whose exaggerated clowning makes him meaningless as a villain. But the fans don’t care about story crafting, really. It’s the sight of the invincible Pushpa dangling upside down from a Japanese crane while slicing up a few dozen yakuza that is what we’re here to see — and action supremo director Bandreddi Sukumar delivers as ordered.
Like the lady said, it really is all about brand Pushpa. Once again, Allu Arjun gives a fiercely physical performance as this misshapen survivor, holding his shoulder downwards for the duration so his body leans sideways — which must have been uncomfortable to maintain — and allowing himself to be fattened into a succession of dazzlingly loud floral shirts. When it comes to fighting, he’s an unleashed fury. He also dances like a fighter, stomping vigorously but gracelessly — the star’s trademark style — which gives even the most romantic songs a viscerally animal tone. Devi Sri Prasad provides pumping music to match.
Fudged in the background is Pushpa’s story. He was an illegitimate baby, raised as an orphan within spitting distance of his half-brothers, who nevertheless clawed his way up from scraping a living as a coolie to become the pirate king of sandalwood smuggling. Now he pulls the strings of state, rewarding his favored political dupes with deliveries of sofas stuffed with cash while logging and shipping his wares with impunity. Sukumar finds more opportunities in the business of forestry than you might imagine for spectacle and set-pieces, showing flotillas and convoys of logs in aerial shots to make even a seasoned action fan gasp.
Pushpa’s ego is also sky-high, riding on a masculinity that isn’t ostensibly toxic, but is certainly a 100% proof. Against the odds in this kind of film, however, he is not just a one-dimensional hard man. For a start, he is in thrall to his wife who, as shown in several surprisingly frank sequences, is very demanding of his sexual services. That massive ego, meanwhile, is easily bruised. When the provincial minister he bankrolls refuses to be photographed with him, he is humiliated; when it is pointed out that, as an illegitimate child, he has no surname, he is reduced to a hot mess, weeping on his wife’s breast.
To play so many contradictions in what is ostensibly a rollicking action film is no mean achievement. And it is worth noting that Arjun’s most dazzling scene is set at a festival where male supplicants to the goddess Durga must dress as women. Pushpa appears as Kali, painted blue with a lot of eyeliner; Arjun, barrel-chested and bearded, pulls off this ambitious bit of cross-dressing with total conviction. He is asking the goddess for a daughter, because a girl will not be shamed by his having no name to bequeath her. There is a poignant naivety to that, even if his devotional dance soon segues into a fight — all the more dazzling, of course, for being fought and won by a man in a skirt.
Pushpa 2: The Rule is inordinately long, not just because it clocks in at 3 hours and 22 minutes, but because the last hour is given over to the impenetrable unpicking of Pushpa’s past as well as an additional subplot in which he saves a maiden’s honor, that is really surplus to requirements. The item number, a salacious song delivered by Sreeleela, precedes a final sequence that sets us up for Pushpa 3: The Rampage, when there will no doubt be a new villain and new set of grievances tearing at our rough-knuckled hero’s heart. Given it’s not even the end of the story, you do wonder why it had to go on so long. But Pushpa 2 gives a lot of bang for a punter’s buck. A lot of bang, plus a disturbing number of cut logs.
Title: Pushpa 2: The Rule
Distributor: AA Films (North India)
Release date: December 5, 2024
Director: Bandreddi Sukumar
Screenwriters: Bandreddi Sukumar, Srikanth Vissa
Cast: Allu Arjun, Rashmika Mandanna, Fahadh Faasil, Dhananjay, Sunil, Anasuya Bharadwaj, Jagadeesh Prathap Bandari
Running time: 3 hr 22 mins
English (US) ·