Sukumar’s imagination ensures many unforgettable cinematic highs, but the lows are equally exasperating; the first half crackles with promise, the second turns out to be an incomplete, incoherent mess
At the climax of Pushpa: The Rise (2021), writer-director Sukumar made it evident that his story of the unrelenting underdog was far from over. The first instalment of the mega franchise introduced us to Pushpa Raj, who furiously gallops from being a measly labourer to dominating and leading an entire smuggling syndicate of the Seshachalam Hills. Pushpa overthrows powerful enemies and endures personal disparagement to become the undisputed king of the Red Sandalwood mafia, only to encounter the authoritative police officer Bhanwar Singh Shekhawat as his biggest nemesis to date.
If Pushpa Raj is unruly and dogged, Shekhawat is cunning and manipulating: the battle between them is less physical and a lot more psychological, with ego, arrogance and condescension playing big parts. So, it naturally doesn’t sit well with the cop that a “coolie”, of all, belittles him and gains control over his psyche at the end of the 2021 film. If Pushpa has to continue his ascension and expand his realm to an international market, he needs to not only play a top game but mainly counter a man’s insatiable thirst for reprisal. And Sukumar needs a much bigger canvas to accommodate all of this.
Fittingly, Pushpa: The Rule comes as an exercise in obliging excess. The film ups the ante in every aspect and surrounds its central character with a kind of ambition that’s both awe-inspiring and aggravating. At every turn, Sukumar oozes inventiveness and artistry to offer a visually stunning spectacle led by a supremely formidable Allu Arjun. The only problem, and no doubt a big one, is that the filmmaker cannot contain himself and ends up running amok because of an adrenaline rush he derives from his own protagonist. The result is a film that’s a tale of two halves, with the first half crackling with promise and the second turning out to be an incomplete, incoherent mess.
Sukumar deals with a deft hand
To announce the film and its lead character’s international ambitions, the story is kicked off at a Japanese customs port where Pushpa Raj attempts to secure his huge Sandalwood load from Yakuza-like men. A roaring fight ensues that gets the ball rolling, but Sukumar swiftly pivots to the dusty, dry lanes of the Chittoor district where a huge mound of drama awaits. Pushpa is slowly nearing the peak of his prowess and has an ensemble of support: from thousands of labourers willing to die for him to members of the syndicate to MP Siddappa (Rao Ramesh) himself. But dignity, the operative word of his entire life, somehow sneakily still eludes him and when the presiding CM of Andhra Pradesh refuses to get a picture clicked with him (as requested by his wife Srivalli, played by Rashmika Mandanna), he decides that it’s now time to take matters seriously into his own hands.
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Sukumar is deft at blending these complex insecurities of Pushpa with a sprawling gangster-action story, and Pushpa: The Rule operates at its best when it makes the former its fulcrum. The writer-director straddles a dual identity in that he performs a solid fan service with slow-motion fight sequences, song-and-dance numbers etc. while carefully injecting his material with its central conflict. For many, Fahadh Faasil’s fleeting presence in the first instalment might have felt injustice to the Malayalam actor’s calibre but here he is made to deliver at his best, matching wit-to-wit and energy-to-energy with Allu Arjun. The first half of The Rule is generously sprinkled with confrontations and mental combats between their two characters that beautifully augment the mutual self-respect angle, and Sukumar closes in on them at every chance he gets. Pushpa knows Shekhawat is an unwarranted thorn in his path and all he has to do is utter a simple apology to the man to sort things out: But will the new kingpin of Seshachalam negotiate and bow down, just once, for his people? Or will he remain as bullheaded as ever?
It is rare to see a big-ticket film of such hype and proportion to dedicate time to an equation such as this. While Pushpa: The Rule unfolds at its own pace during these portions and risks quieting down its effervescent audience, it nevertheless proves that Sukumar is revered for his guile to build drama. The seasoned filmmaker, unlike most other huge productions of late, creates a unique world that originates from a very rooted place and whose characters embody the cultural essence — the slang-laden diction, the folklore, the cadence and the crudeness — the region they belong to. Special credit, then, must go to costume designer Sheetal Sharma whose work captures this ethos, but with an added layer of verve and originality.
A technical marvel
Simultaneously, the film brings Srivalli into the fore and develops a marital relationship that’s refreshingly of value to the narrative. The animalistic vigour that Pushpa and Srivalli feel for each other isn’t just a tool to make things “sexy” on the screen as much as it is to enunciate Pushpa’s feminine, more tender side. Be it the unspoken manner in which Srivalli understands the trauma that Pushpa carries as being dubbed an illegitimate child his entire life, or the way he softens whenever he is in her company, the romance between them feels real and vibrant. So, when Allu Arjun effortlessly slips into his much-discussed androgynous avatar at one point in the film, the significance of the moment is heightened all the more by the love they share for one another.
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It is highly possible that one walks out of Pushpa: The Rule remembering only the post-interval Gangammathalli jathara sequence. Aside from Sukumar’s fierce imagination, the extended scene comprising two exquisitely choreographed songs and a thunderous fight sequence is brought to life by the equally competent technical team. Cinematographer Miroslaw Brozek saturates it with an explosion of colours dripping from the stunningly opulent set piece designed by art directors S. Ramakrishna and Monika Nigotre. Allu Arjun then delivers a performance of a lifetime that oscillates smoothly between elegant and maniacal, while Rashmika Mandanna gets her own platform to show that she truly belongs to the big league now.
Allu Arjun rescues a hotch-potch effort
On the flip side, the same sequence becomes the last thing to savour in the film as things quickly, and perplexingly, start to spiral out of control. Shekhawat suddenly ceases to be the chief antagonist and his accomplices — the very potent duo of Mangalam Srinu (Sunil) and Dakshayani (Anasuya Bharadwaj) — are passed over with as little care as possible. Newer nemeses, one of them being Jagapathi Babu’s Central mining minister, Prathap Reddy, enter the fray and upset things for Pushpa Raj whose objective now is to tend to familial conundrums, suggesting that his quest for power and dominance is somehow abruptly complete. Sukumar stages more and more action sequences that shock, trigger and spellbind all at once (leaving music composer Devi Sri Prasad with too much to do), but he does so at the grand cost of squandering all the narrative tension he had built in the first half.
Pushpa: The Rule, ultimately, draws curtains prematurely but not without announcing that all the myriad loose threads of the story will potentially be tied up in the third instalment of the series, titled Pushpa: The Rampage. It also welcomes a new faceless adversary to the mix (another chance to cast a big name, one surmises) but the move to extend the storyline seems to stem more out of desperation than as a tactical decision. Despite the luxury of a 200-minute runtime, the film ends up being a hotch-potch of an effort with many highs and a few really hurting lows, but with Allu Arjun striking absolute top form for this one, there's lots to take home here.
