Pushpa: The Rule - Part 2

I want to keep this review short because I am already exhausted because of this movie's running time. I wasn't a great fan of Pushpa: The Rise, it made the money mainly because it somehow managed to impress the North Indian demographic with its unapologetic portrayal of a loud lead actor. Pushpa 2: The Rule continues to do the same in a louder, bigger, lengthier and only at certain times, better.

Pushpa: The rise ended on a promising note with the introduction of the menacing Fahadh Faasil as Bhanwar Singh Shekawat. This movie does focus on the battle between Shekawat and Pushpa but becomes more of a cat and mouse game pretty soon. The back and forth conning sequences become repetitive and Shekawat's role slowly turns into a comedy gag while Pushpa's role keeps getting larger than life. There are certain parts of the movie which clearly look like they are rewritten just to increase the scale of the movie. In the latter part of the second half, the movie takes a U turn from the cat and mouse angle to become an action family sentiment drama with the introduction of the new antagonists. This leads to an impressive but a stereotypical action climax which would have fit well if the whole movie had the same tone.

Certain scenes from the teaser and trailer aren't found in this 200 minute long movie and Sukumar which makes you wonder whether Sukumar really did intend to end with a scope opening for Part 3.

This is definitely Allu Arjun's career best performance, the man has given it all. But after a while you also wonder if you may have seen him too much into Pushpa's character, you miss the old charming AA. While Rashmika is impressive you can sense that Sukumar has rewritten Rashmika''s character and the scenes around Allu Arjun hyping her because of the negative feedback received on her objectification in Part 1. However, the objectification continues to exist in the song and dance sequences and also fitting in an unnecessary item song bringing in Sreeleela. While Fahadh Faasil's role scope changes in this movie, he is still impressive with his maniac comedy. The chemistry between Shekawat and Pushpa at times is so fun that I wouldn't complain if there is a spin-off comedy movie around that. There is not much to speak about the remaining supporting characters who are part of this movie as an extravaganza.

Pushpa 2: The rule is an unnecessarily lengthy character montage for Allu Arjun with one hype scene after another. It may be fun for a certain demographic, but it lacks the soul of a typical South Indian mass movie.