Hero worship gone wrong: Deepanjana Pal writes on Pushpa 2

At one point in the first half of Pushpa 2: The Rule, the titular hero throws down a challenge to his nemesis, the police officer Bhanwar Singh Shekhawat. Pushpa promises to whisk an enormous heap of red sanders logs out from under the noses of patrolling cops, just to snub the cop. The film even celebrates how red sandalwood is refashioned into domestic items, as though the trees have no purpose other than to cater to human whims. Soon enough, despite a few well-imagined sequences, the film devolves into a celebration of an action hero who reflects both the anxieties and fantasies of contemporary Indian masculinity.