Akhanda 2: Thandavam may appeal to Nandamuri Balakrishna's fans and will be a madcap awakening for those uninitiated in Boyapati Sreenu's no goofball ideas in constructing action, notes Arjun Menon.
There has been box office magic whenever Nandamuri Balakrishna joins hands with Director Boyapati Sreenu.
After three blockbusters (Simha, Legend and Akhanda), they decided to go bigger with their fourth collaboration, Akhanda 2: Thaandavam.
The film picks up a few years after the first movie. The little girl from the first instalment is now a scientist working on a revolutionary antibody Bio Shield that could offer protection to soldiers from nature-related ailments.
Murali Krishna (Nandamuri Balakrishna) is leading the life of a widower.
His mother is still traumatised by the departure of her other son, Akhanda Rudra Sikandar Aghora, also played by Balakrishna.
Murali's daughter, the prodigy genius Janani (Harshaali Malhotra), is working for DRDO under the guidance of her free-spirited professor (Samyuktha Menon) in developing a vaccine as a bio war breaks out in the country.
A scheming politician and his brothers help a ruthless Tibetan general hatch a conspiracy to 'end' India.
Akhanda is louder in its scope this time around and uses every bit of screen time with relentless energy in building up set pieces.
Nandamuri Balakrishna's quick, zany dialogue delivery is maintained with even more conviction in the sequel, where nothing is left to chance to cash in on the 'IP' value of the Akhanda cinematic universe.
Sreenu is not a filmmaker known for subtle gestures. He likes his films to be events unto themselves and writes the most bizarre scripts that bounce from one improbable idea to another.
It is tough to sit through many of the action set pieces as they are built up with excessively slow motion shots.
Akhanda 2 is very linear in its storytelling and uses the biowar angle as the backdrop to engulf you in constant sermonising about nationhood and Dharma 101.
Sanatan Dharma is invoked multiple times and the busy screenplay finds pockets of long monologues for the immortal Aghora to directly address the camera and go on about the need to unify as a nation and awaken the Hindu spirit.
It's a disastrous tonal highwire act and a misfire that only a director as least self-aware like Boyapati Sreenu can pull off. He makes the tiresome action work with his poker-faced charm.
The biowar plays out against the government's attempts to retrieve the antidote, and the politician and gang try to hurt Janani to get their hands to destroy the antidote and fulfil their evil plans to divide the country and to irradiate dharma and the concept of God from the grieving population's mind, who have lost loved ones from virus-related deaths.
Akhanda 2 is the manifestation of the promise made by the hero to his niece in the first film to return whenever she got into harm's way.
How will Akhanda thwart an ongoing national disaster and save his niece?
How does the long haired aghori come back to fulfil his dying mother's last wish?
These strands tie up Akhanda 2: Thandavam.
Thaman really goes for it this time, composing a excessively loud, almost deafening score that injects some energy into the flatly conceived scenes.
The acting by the supporting cast is hammy.
Every scene is bookended by a unintentionally funny expression or line delivery thanks to the supporting characters, who are just hype machines for the hero, designed soley to react awkwardly to the madness on display.
There are moments when the villains, the plotting enemy generals, appear to be willfully sloppy caricatures, whose sole aim is to tarnish India.
Akhanda 2: Thandavam might appeal to Nandamuri Balakrishna's fans and will be a madcap awakening for those uninitiated in Boyapati Sreenu's ludicrously minimalistic and almost B movie adjacent cinematic vision and his no holds barred optimism in goofball ideas in constructing action.
It has a lot of sermonising that can be had for those who enjoy seeing Balakrishna do seemingly impossible action beats with elegance and conviction.
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