Bhasme Don is a man of our times. He plays PUBG on his phone, mixes modern English slang in his Nepali and gives daan via QR codes. He also thinks he rules Pashupati—coming up with elaborate ruses to make money—cheating visitors for money, bullying and beating up other swindlers and spouting sharp one-liners.

But Pashupati is home to many others like him. It is when Kali Prasad (played by Saugat Malla)—a former wrestler—arrives that Bhasme Don’s ‘don-ness’ is challenged, and what follows is an almost ‘cat-and-mouse’ sequence of them trying to one-up each other.

‘Bhasme Don’ is a sequel to the much-beloved film ‘Pashupati Prasad’, released in 2016. The first film follows the turbulent life of Pashupati Prasad, whose ill fate brings him to the banks of the sacred Bagmati, where he makes friends and foes. Bhasme Don (played by Bipin Karki)—although a minor character—was appreciated by many thanks to his unusually raspy voice, signature matrix sunglasses and quirky persona. The second series, ‘Pashupati Prasad 2: Bhasme Don’, is a spin-off focusing solely on Bhasme Don and his life after the events of the first film.

As the movie opens, Bhasme Don is currently fasting—aka abstaining from violence—to absolve his previous sins. The violence part is pretty much handled by his mini-goons who follow his orders. One fine day, he decides to look for his birth parents, who dropped him off at an orphanage when he was a child. For this, he needs to gather Rs1,000,000 to pay as a bribe to a corrupt orphanage official.

It is wholly unclear why Bhasme Don, who is shown throughout both films using violence and extortion to get what he wants, doesn’t just threaten or lock up the official for information—he could’ve used his mini goons. He is unusually placid and compliant and self-sacrifices to move the plot forward.

Around him, Pashupati is, once again, an entity of its own—a place of life and death, of transcendence and restraints. We are thus introduced to a new character—Swastima Khadka, as a ‘Devi’ who survives on daan given by devotees for blessings and selfies. Malla’s Kali Prasad—who the writers thought should be Madheshi (with the accent and all)—also finds himself asking for blessings from Pashupati to free his daughter from hospital bills.

Karki embodies Bashme Don to a T and is the saving grace of this film. His raspy laughter, hilarious one-liners, and empathetic dialogues draw you in, and Karki brilliantly humanises the ‘anti-hero’. Other than that, the film is too nostalgic and dependent on the first films—there are cameos of all the previous characters of the first film, and many just feel incredibly out of place. It is so stuck on what happened in the first film that writer Khagendra Lamichhane’s prose feels almost narcissistic and, thus, does a disservice to Bhasme Don’s own arc, which never gets to grow beyond the cat-and-mouse storyline.

‘Bashme Don’ also employs similar catharsis and plot points to move the story forward—abrupt betrayals, sudden and irrational obstacles for the main character—that it becomes bland because we’ve already seen it in the first film. The overhead shot where Bhasme Don is talking to Pashupati while looking upto the sky—perhaps a direct reference to the first film—is tolerable and would’ve been more than enough to connect the two films.

One thing that was particularly fascinating was the duality of Bhasme Don and Kali Prasad; each committed crimes for a relatively noble cause: Bhasme Don so he could find his birth parents, Kali Prasad, so that he could bring back his daughter. The perception of these characters is a battle of ethics—Kantian or utilitarian—as each tries to justify their actions on the basis of their good ‘end goal’.

‘Bhasme Don’ fails to trust itself and its capability to tell a unique, subtle and powerful story without cliches and predictable plotlines. When filmmakers are too busy thinking about where to add the next betrayal, suspense or social message in their film, they forget that good character buildups are, oftentimes, more than enough.

Pashupati Prasad 2: Bhasme Don

Released on: October 21

Director: Dipendra K Khanal

Cast: Bipin Karki, Saugat Malla, Swastima Khadka, Prakash Ghimire

Language: Nepali

Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes

Now showing: QFX, Big Cinemas, One Cinemas