Pushpa: The Rise - Part 1

 

Summary :

Violence erupts between red sandalwood smugglers and the police charged with bringing down their organization.

Cast & Crew : 

• CAST 

• Allu Arjun                                                                        As Pushpa Raj
• Rashmika MandannaAs Srivalli
• Fahadh FaasilAs Bhanwar Singh Shekhawat IPS
• DhananjayAs Jolly Reddy
• SunilAs Mangalam Srinu
• Anasuya BharadwajAs Drakshayini
• Samantha Ruth Prabhu
• Ajay
• Rao Ramesh
• Ajaygosh
• Shatru
• Temper Vamshi
• Jagdeeah Prathap Bandari as Keshav

• CREW

• 
  
• SukumarDirector
• NaveenProducer
• Y Ravi ShankarProducer
• C V MohanProducer
• Devi Sri PrasadMusic Director
• ShivamSinger
• Sid SriramSinger
• MounikaSinger
• Nakash AzizSinger
• Indravathi ChouhanSinger
• Miroslaw Kuba BrozekCinematogarphy
• Karthika SrinivasEditing

Pushpa: The Rise - Part 1 Movie Review : It's Allu Arjun's show all the way

 STORY: 

     Pushpa Raj is a coolie who rises in the world of red sandalwood smuggling. Along the way, he               doesn’t shy from making an enemy or two.

REVIEW:

 With Pushpa: The Rise, Sukumar ventures into unchartered territory by making a rustic masala film filled with punch dialogues, characters that speak in a Chittoor dialect and a story that’s rooted deep in the region it’s set in. And seeing as how expectations were sky-high after Rangasthalam, what he delivers turns out to be a mixed bag that's over-long, falters at times and delivers what it promises at others.

Pushpa Raj (Allu Arjun) is one of the many coolies in Seshachalam who chop down red sandalwood illegally and sell it by the kilo to powers-that-be. In a syndicate that consists of numerous players, Pushpa slowly learns to find his footing and rise in ranks till the man who would once chop down these trees becomes the one giving the orders. However, his Achilles heel is not his lady love Srivalli (Rashmika Mandanna), or the big-wigs Konda Reddy (Ajay Ghosh), Jolly Reddy (Dhananjay), Mangalam Srinu (Sunil) and his wife Dakshayani (Anasuya Baradwaj). It is the fact that his brother (Ajay) won’t let him claim his lineage, something that takes Pushpa from zero to hundred in no time and often becomes the reason for this laid-back, sarcastic, arrogant, even funny man to lose his cool. And right as he gets where he wants to be in life, in comes IPS Bhanwar Singh Shekawat (Fahadh Faasil) threatening to upend the carefully constructed order that Pushpa has put in place.

Pushpa: The Rise is backed by a story that’s often explored in cinema – the rise of the underdog. So Sukumar really has nothing new to explore here. What’s new is the way he chooses to expand the story and spend time on setting up Pushpa’s character for a whole film, spanning three hours, before getting into the thick of things. And this move really might not sit well with everyone because despite all the hoopla, that is essentially what this film is. Pushpa might have made foes of numerous people, but none of them seem to even remotely be a match to his unbending nature, that is, till Shekawat comes into town. Sukumar’s film fares well when it sticks to the story at hand and focuses on the nitty gritty of red sanders smuggling, Pushpa’s contribution to smoothening things out, etc. Where the film falters is when it tries to pull off an odd (and problematic) romance between him and Srivalli, this doesn’t always work or even add to the larger story at hand. Sure, Pushpa gets a chance to be her knight-in-shining-armour but it seems to move the story in a direction it would’ve gone anyway. The final confrontation between Pushpa and Shekawat also doesn't have the desired effect, coming off as rushed and the latter's character seeming underwhelming.