For a few crores more: "Jailer 2"

As we join Jailer 2, the sequel to 2023's biggest Tamil hit, the illegal trade in religious icons exposed in the course of film one continues apace, although its more inventive heavies have adjusted their preferred torture methods: bubbling vats of acid have now been replaced by burying snitches and flunkies alive in underground tunnels. Superstar Rajinikanth - as the former jailer Pandian - is still pursuing restorative justice by any means necessary, albeit from the lowly perspective of a supermarket shelfstacker, an alias he's assumed in order to protect himself and his family from vengeful pursuers; the character is reintroduced here halting a potential shoplifter with the aid of an umbrella and a laundry basket. And writer-director Nelson is back behind the camera, still constitutionally unable to set up anything other than an interesting shot. Elsewhere, however, change is in the air. The first Jailer began as dadsploitation pulp, before taking a sharp left turn into Elmore Leonard territory; Jailer 2 flips that trajectory on its head. For the first half here, we're watching a shaggy dog story with criminal elements, a means of connecting the dots between a major pan-Indian hit and a future third instalment, all undertaken by creatives who've relaxed to some extent, safe in the knowledge there is an audience out there who will happily pay to see this star and this director cook. The second shift concerns Pandian's status. No longer a showboating underworld player, he is, for much of Jailer 2, a mere cog in the machine, a khaki-clad everyman trying his best to go unnoticed while remaining at the mercy of the plotting fates. After a dust-up with a municipalities officer over his village's cloudy water supply, Pandian finds himself enlisted into a risky form of community service, becoming the driver for an inept fruiterer with criminal aspirations. One of Jailer 2's subtlest (and funniest) running jokes - the one you feel Leonard would have most enjoyed - is its insinuation that Kerala's underworld is composed of such blustering idiots that practically anybody might rise to the top with the right level of firepower at hand. (It is, at the very least, an irreverent counterposition to the might-makes-right obsessions of the two Dhurandhars.)

The downside of this approach is that the dramatic stakes feel palpably lower this time around; we're getting a lot more posturing and playacting than actual threat. The plot initially bears some faint resemblance to one of the strongest recent South hits, last year's thriller Thudarum, where superstar Mohanlal - himself on Everyman duty - was pressganged into playing chauffeur for a cabal of corrupt cops. (Rajni and Nelson appear to acknowledge some connection in handing Mohanlal a glorified walk-on in a quite dreadful Barry Gibb hairpiece.) It's a similar set-up played for a grab bag of shits and giggles; the upside is that, for a long time, the giggles are frequent and pretty big. Nelson is one of the few working Indian filmmakers who can knock a laugh out of you just from some felicity of framing: some artful business that misdirects us into believing Pandian has actually killed that municipalities officer with a spade, multiple nods to the decapitation that proved such a crowdpleaser first time around. I'd go even further and suggest that Nelson may be the one young Indian filmmaker who's troubled to study the films of the great Sergio Leone. What he appears to have taken away from the latter's work is the realisation that if a film is going to lead us around the houses for the better part of three hours, a director has to ensure a steady supply of rich and varied scenery; and furthermore, if we're being led astray by violent men, the violence has to be striking (if not necessarily deeply affecting). That last lesson is visible almost everywhere you look in Jailer 2's exceptionally enjoyable first half: in a standoff at a roadside tea house - a textbook Leone location - where the tension in this premise finally starts to build, in a makeshift whip circle designed to lash the Jailer's true identity out of his new associates, and in the punchline to "Ala Bolelo", the year's best staged musical number, a South Indian equivalent to that Romain Gavras/Yung Lean promo that European folks have spent the last six months going crazy about.

I sort of wish Jailer 2 had stayed in this Leone zone, which feels like this franchise's sweetest spot. Instead, the usual mass movie ADHD kicks in, a couple of scenes either side of the intermission so comprehensively clearing the chessboard that the second half effectively begins anew: now we're watching Pandian tangling with S.J. Suryah and a tatted-and-bobbed Vidya Balan as power-hungry siblings maintaining the statue trade from a cave beneath their lavish Goan wellness spa. You could, I suppose, embrace this offer of two Jailer sequels for the price of one ticket, but pitching our hero into the worlds of Succession and The White Lotus seems small fry and afterthought-y having witnessed Rajni stride so coolly and casually into the world of Once Upon a Time in the West. (Everything suddenly seems inferior: the Nora Fatehi number, "Bindaas", is colourfully composed and lively enough in other respects, but it can't hold a candle to "Ala Bolelo".) Nelson, bless him, is still coming up with moments that pop: a ridiculous bit involving a zipwire and an electric wheelchair, a clever bait-and-switch with a concealed listening device, an unexpected guest star ploughing a souped-up hotrod through the middle of a police station. Yet with the ensemble retreating into the background - if not being bumped offscreen altogether - the second half reverts to the untouchable, indomitable hero worship of the first movie, and to the sort of storytelling a twelve-year-old boy would make up for their favourite actor. And then the girls in bikinis storm in carrying swords... And then there's a bomb in the wheelchair... And then a sports car speeds head first into a moving plane... And then Rajni puts his glasses back on, lights up a big cigar and walks towards the camera, while an even bigger explosion goes off behind him. Cut, scene, wrap, onto Jailer 3 for those who've survived the carnage. In the end, it turns out there are some snafus even the Jailer can't resolve: the mass cinema's fondness for Illustrious Corpses-style screenwriting, the clashes in key actors' schedules. But - my God - why can't more sequels be this restlessly inventive, and be this interesting just to look at?

Jailer 2 is now playing in cinemas nationwide.