Ram Pothineni pronounces the word “mind” with a very specific, aggressive elongation that makes it sound like three syllables, and after hearing it twenty-four times in the first half hour, you start measuring time in those syllables rather than minutes. Puri Jagannadh is back to shouting at the audience through a loudspeaker made of celluloid, assuming that if the camera spins fast enough nobody will notice the plot was written on the back of an old laundry receipt. It is loud, it is deeply irritating in places, and yet there is an undeniable kinetic panic to the way the thing moves that keeps you from checking your watch until at least the interval.

We are dealing with a sequel to a film that nobody was demanding a continuation of, which usually means the creative tank was already dry before anyone even signed the contracts. The original iSmart Shankar worked because the trashy sci-fi premise of a dead cop's memory chip being crammed into the brain of a street thug had a certain goofy energy that hadn't quite curdled into self-parody yet. Here, that same gimmick is dragged out behind a pickup truck for two and a half hours, with memory transfer protocols that make less sense than a cartoon anvil falling from the sky. Puri’s direction relies heavily on slow-motion entries and characters shouting exposition at each other while neon lights blink pointlessly in the background. If I'm honest, the editing feels like it was done by someone who drank six espressos and then lost the scissors, cutting away from dialogue scenes just as they might have gotten interesting to shove in another unnecessary dance number that stops the narrative dead in its tracks.

Ram throws himself into the dual-personality chaos with a terrifying level of physical commitment that borders on public health concern. He sweats through his shirts, he yells every single line as though he is standing across a very wide parking lot from the person he is addressing, and he executes the choreography with joints that seem entirely disconnected from gravity. It's a performance that makes his work in something like Devadas look positively restrained by comparison. Across from him, Sanjay Dutt wanders through the frames looking like he won a contest to be in a Telugu movie and is currently trying to figure out where he left his car keys. His dialogue delivery is mostly dubbed by someone whose voice doesn't quite match his physical bulk, creating a weird disconnect every time he tries to look menacing while holding a grenade. Kavya Thapar gets the thankless job of standing around in increasingly impractical outfits to cheer for Ram, a role that requires nothing more than looking concerned when he gets kicked through a wall and looking ecstatic when he dances on top of a car.

The cinematography by Gianni Giannelli treats every single location like it's a perfume commercial shot in a damp warehouse, drowning the screen in teal and magenta filters until your eyes start to ache. Mani Sharma’s background score hits you right in the sternum with heavy brass and electronic drops that never let up, not even when two characters are having what is supposed to be a quiet emotional conversation in a hospital hallway. There's a recurring flute motif that drops in during the romantic scenes which sounds suspiciously like a Windows 98 startup sound slowed down, and once you hear it, you cannot unhear it for the rest of the runtime. The sound design is so aggressively loud that the popcorn in your lap actually vibrates during the action sequences, which might be an intentional immersive choice or simply a mixing desk left permanently in the red.

Underneath the surface-level noise and the endless parade of thugs getting kicked in the throat, the script tries to fumble its way around themes of identity and corrupted memory. The idea that a person's soul might reside in their muscle memory rather than their actual brain is genuinely fascinating for about four seconds before the movie loses interest and blows up a helicopter instead. Hindi films often try to import this kind of swagger-heavy anti-hero trope with varying degrees of success, but Puri treats morality like a minor inconvenience that can be solved by doing a front flip over a burning car. The women in the story exist entirely to be rescued, or to dance in a fountain, or to look at Ram with moist eyes while he monologues about how much he loves his motherland. It is aggressively retrogressive in a way that feels less like a conscious political choice and more like a total lack of curiosity about how the world outside this specific bubble might view these relationships.

There is a specific supporting actor playing a corrupt police commissioner who pronounces every single English loan word with the exact same inflection, and it drove me crazy by scene three. It's a small thing, but it bugged me more than the plot holes. Bollywood movies occasionally manage to ground this brand of hyper-masochistic nonsense in some semblance of character arc, but Double Ismart prefers to just double down on the volume whenever the logic starts to fray. By the time the third act rolls around, the memory transfer has gotten so convoluted that even the actors look like they are guessing which camera to look at. You leave the theater with a slight headache and the distinct impression that nobody involved in the production cared whether the story made sense as long as the bass was loud enough to rattle the floorboards.