Sardar 2 is out, and the verdict so far is split down the middle.

Karthi and director PS Mithran's sequel to their 2022 hit Sardar, which had grossed roughly Rs 100 crore worldwide, released this week carrying the weight of that original's success. The follow-up brings back Karthi opposite SJ Suriya, with Malavika Mohanan and Ashika Ranganath rounding out the cast. Sam CS scores the film, marking his hundredth as composer.

One of Tamil cinema's more widely watched reviewers, Blue Sattai Maran, put out his verdict on his YouTube channel a day after release, and it's not the ringing endorsement the franchise's fans were hoping for.

The story and the stretch

According to Maran's review, the plot centres on a biological weapon called Doku, which the film's villain plans to unleash on the public. Karthi's Sardar steps in to stop him, and what follows over the next three hours is, in the critic's telling, a thin premise pulled well past its natural length. Maran says the film runs short on logic, sentiment and emotional weight in equal measure, and while the first half holds up reasonably, the second, by his account, drags considerably.

What keeps the film watchable, per this review, is SJ Suriya. Maran calls his character the one genuine relief in the film, someone doing what he can to hold the whole thing together. But even that goodwill runs out eventually, he says, once the writing around that character stops giving him anything fresh to do and the film turns flat.

A villain's odd logic

One beat from the film that's drawn particular attention: the villain justifies his killings by pointing to people eating broiler chicken, arguing that's reason enough to turn on humanity himself. Maran's review treats this bit with visible sarcasm, joking that if avoiding broiler chicken were truly the price of survival, audiences would rather take their own lives than sit through the film's climactic stretch, which he describes as roughly forty-five minutes that test patience hard.

His reading: Sardar 2 is technically well put together but no stronger, storywise, than the original, which he rates as merely average to begin with. This one, he suggests, falls a notch below even that.

Maran isn't alone in flagging the pacing. Fan chatter around the film's release megathread has been similarly divided, some viewers calling the film a letdown despite the technical polish, others defending its scale and Suriya's turn.

Whether that split holds up at the box office over the coming weekend, or whether word of mouth pulls numbers down from what the first part managed, is the next thing to watch. Neither PS Mithran nor Karthi has responded publicly to the reviews so far.