Cast: Yash, Sanjay Dutt, Srinidhi Shetty, Raveena Tandon, Prakash Raj, Anant Nag
Director: Prashanth Neel
Ratings: 2 Stars (Out of 5)
About the only good thing about K.G.F. Chapter 2 is that you know what you are buying into. Chapter 1 had driven home the point that Raja Krishnappa Beria, better known as Rocky, isn't an ordinary gangster. He does not have a gang with him. He is a lone wolf with the appetite of one. He is just the sort of protagonist you would expect in a film such as this. Everything that it conceives is rendered in gigantic, sweeping doses.
Lead actor revelled Yash in playing a hero with the power of a battalion - an act that catapulted him and the movie into the national consciousness. In the second instalment of the story, having established his individual suzerainty over the Kolar Gold Fields, the protagonist continues to hurtle down the same path, sweeping aside everyone and anyone who stands in his way. He tightens his stranglehold on El Dorado. The film gasps for breath.
K.G.F. Chapter 1 was a humongous hit all right, but cinematically it was a terribly pedestrian affair - loud, verbose, manic and monotonous. K.G.F. Chapter 2, written and directed by Prashanth Neel and produced by Hombale Films' Vijay Kiragandur, exudes confidence that it has nothing to lose. It doesn't lower either its volume or its volubility one bit.
The film is the handiwork of people who do not seem to have the foggiest sense of modulation, or of moderation, in the matter of pitching and sound design. Relentless action, an unstoppable torrent of words, a splotchy and grainy colour palette and dizzyingly fidgety camerawork get in the way of the story acquiring any degree of tonal variation.
Indeed, K.G.F. Chapter 2 is one uninterrupted, ear-splitting drone that lasts all of three hours. If your brain survives the onslaught, chances of your eardrums remaining unscathed are slim. The film allows itself absolutely no breathing space either in terms of pacing or with regard to what it piles up on the soundtrack.
In this toxically macho world, women are the worst sufferers. They, like the heroine Reena Desai (Srinidhi Shetty), either stand by and do the bidding of the men - Rocky announces right at the outset to the girl's face that "you are my entertainment" and that is meant to sound cool - or haplessly wail and rant in hope of being rescued from their plight.
By way of facile tokenism, there is much ado about a girl child in Narachi who hasn't been killed at birth. The older women in the goldmine region once lorded over by ruthless tyrants and now in the control of the benign hero - a marginally better version of the guys he has snatched power from - perpetually have their backs to the wall.
K.G.F. Chapter 2 opens with the death of veteran journalist and writer Anand Ingalagi (so, Anant Nag has no role here). His narration about the rise and rise of Rocky, an orphan boy who cut his death in the merciless underworld of Bombay, is left incomplete. Deepa Hegde (Malavika Avinash), the TV station boss, wonders who will take the story to its (il)logical end.
Anand Ingalagi's estranged son Vijayendra (Prakash Raj), who has no reason to mourn the passing of his dad but cannot resist the urge to continue what the deceased raconteur, the author of a banned book on the Kolar Gold Fields and Rocky's role in its history, started.
The device of an all-knowing sutradhar leads to the film's rare pauses (not silence, mind you), thanks to Prakash Raj's ability to modulate his dialogue delivery and lend a certain gravitas to meaningless lines like "history says that powerful people come from powerful places".
Everyone else in K.G.F. Chapter yelps and shrieks. One of them contradicts Vijayendra's and asserts that it is powerful people who make places powerful. That is the apogee of the philosophical wisdom that this mass entertainer peddles.
Of course, for good measure, Rocky, sounding like Gordon Gekko, intones that greed is good, greed is progress. The film's idea of plot progression is pitting the hero against a whole lot of people who are ambitious and aggressive as him. So, there is no dearth of conflict in K.G.F Chapter 2.
With the background score intent on squashing any possibility of serenity, the film gallops like a runaway horse with Yash ('Rocking Star' is prefixed to his name in the opening credits) firmly on its back. The men who once swore allegiance to Garuda (Ramachandra Raju), the Narachi Limestone Corporation owner's ambitious son who lost his life at the hands of Rocky in the preceding chapter, are now his rivals.
But Rocky leaves nobody in any doubt at all about his resolve to call the shots in KGF here on. But the evil politician Guru Pandian (Achyuth Kumar), the heroine's father Rajendra Desai (Lakki Lakshman) and Andrews (B.S. Avinash) aren't the only ones Rocky has to reckon with as he transforms himself from a brigand in pursuit of glory to a leader of the downtrodden goldmine workers.
Adheera (Sanjay Dutt, evoking his Agneepath arch-villain vibes and pulling out the stops) returns from the dead, the new Prime Minister Ramika Sen (Raveena Tandon) vows to demolish the KGF empire, and senior CBI officer Kanneganti Raghavan (Rao Ramesh) gathers all the ammunition that he and his outfit need to end the reign of the country's most notorious criminal.
K.G.F. Chapter 2 is relentless is its pursuit of high drama and unbridled action - one scene follows another in a non-stop exhibition of cinematic excess that prevents the niceties of the medium finding their way into the messy, massy mix.
The focus of the film is squarely on Yash. Like he did the first time around, he struts through K.G.F. Chapter 2 with the undisguised glee of a man who knows that he has the measure of his adversaries. Ultimately, the big action sequences, mounted with flair but sans any element of surprise or realism, look and feel mechanical because we know all along no great harm is going to befall the hero.
K.G.F. Chapter 2 is a battering ram of a movie. It is designed to pound the audience to submission. It is only for Yash fans and for those who feel an assault on the senses is a form of cinema. But if you love your eardrums and have had your fill of the super-heroic exploits of an underdog-turned-top dog hero, K.G.F. Chapter is best avoided. It whips up plenty of heat and dust but yields no gold.