‘Dhurandhar’ review: Pakistan-set film offers sadism and expert bad vibes

Hindi cinema was building up to this. Pakistan has lived rent-free in the minds of Bollywood directors and writers, the villain of almost every war or spy film for a while now. Every now and then, a Hindi film will set its story there, whether partially, like Gadar 2, or entirely, like The Diplomat. Yet, these films are seldom interested in Pakistan, its practices and politics and nuances. Their attention is squarely on India, which makes their vision of Pakistan less than vivid.

Dhurandhar has problems but an indifferent Pakistan isn’t one of them. Rather, Dhar’s fantasy Karachi is about the most exciting, dangerous setting you can imagine. It’s where Hamza Ali Mazari (Ranveer Singh) is sent by Indian intelligence as a deep undercover asset in the aftermath of the IC-814 hijacking in 1999 and the 2001 Parliament attack. His mission is to infiltrate the gangs of Lyari, a borough with a history of underworld rivalry. He manages to impress the biggest bad, Rehman Dakait (Akshaye Khanna), and is inducted into the brutal business of maintaining a hold over Karachi.

Dhar has a way with methodical plotting, as we saw in Article 370, the 2024 Kashmir-set film he co-wrote. In Dhurandhar, over nearly three and a half hours, he clearly lays out the complex topography of Lyari’s power struggles. Rehman is of Baloch ancestry; his rivals are Pashtun. He’s a vital vote bank and source of muscle for MLA Jameel Jamali (Rakesh Bedi), though neither man trusts the other. He deals weapons sourced from Baloch fighters, which ISI chief Iqbal (Arjun Rampal) uses to arm terrorists. And he’s in the crosshairs of Chaudhry Aslam (Sanjay Dutt), a renegade cop as brutal as any of the gangsters.

You’d think that with this much on his plate, Rehman would cut a worried figure. Another actor might have played the don as wary or world-weary—but not Akshaye Khanna. Over the past decade, Khanna has sauntered through films, most of them bad, having the best possible time. It’s a smart rejig, someone who still looks like a leading man but is happy to play the fool. Here he’s a riot, clean-shaven and sharply dressed, preening, grimacing, smirking, keeping everyone on tenterhooks. It’s not a sensible performance, but it’s entertaining as hell; show me another actor who can get a big laugh just saying salaam alaikum.

Surrounded by an excellent rogue’s gallery (Dutt is the only one who doesn’t fit), Singh can be a strong, silent focal point. He has the luxurious mane, and the relaxed majesty, of a lion. He's impossibly buff here; the sheer difference in size between him and Sara Arjun, playing Jamali’s daughter and Hamza’s lover, is almost comical. Dhar ruins his best line somewhat—“Ghaayal hoon, isliye ghaatak hoon" (I’m wounded, that’s why I’m lethal)—superimposing the words on screen as he says them. So little is shown of Hamza’s life before Pakistan that we can only guess what drives him. It perhaps serves Dhar’s purpose to keep Hamza a perpetually cocked gun, unencumbered by backstory. But I missed the emotionality of the similar Rafiq storyline in Saare Jahan Se Accha, a spy series with plenty of shared DNA with Dhar’s film.

Constrained in every other way, Indian films have been pushing the boundaries of what might be considered normal screen violence. Certainly, the average action film is now bloodier and tougher than it used to be a decade ago, with some like Kill and Marco crossing over into horror-exploitation. Dhurandhar has a plenty of squirm-inducing violence, but with a nasty edge that sets it apart from Animal and the like. Dhar is an authentic sadist, willing to lose the viewer in an escalating show of brutality. The torture conducted by Iqbal is perhaps the film’s most gruesome scene, though Hamza doesn’t shrink from extreme measures either.

I was curious how Dhar would fare going from the self-contained Uri to a more expansive film. What struck me in Dhurandhar was how little his methods are altered. Even with the increase in scale, you can see here the patient, tense buildup of Article 370, the agile cutting and serrated action of Uri. Dhar avoids a lot of the tropes of recent Indian action cinema—elaborate entrances, protracted flashbacks, CGI-heavy battles. The one mainstream element he embraces is music, with Shashwat Sachdev repurposing qawwalis (‘Na To Caravan Ki Talash Hai’), Punjabi folk (‘Jugni’) and filmi pop (‘Piya Tu Ab To Aaja’) to stunning effect.

Dhurandhar shares something else fundamental with Dhar’s previous work—it’s propaganda in service of a hawkish India, designed to flatter the ruling BJP leadership. Like Paresh Rawal in Uri, Ajay Sanyal is clearly based on Ajit Doval (Madhavan is styled to look like the National Security Advisor). The film unfolds in the 2000s, much of it Congress-era, and Sanyal is constantly shown with his hands tied, wishing aloud for “politicians who actually care for India", which I imagine will happen in part two once it’s 2014 and Hamza is let off the leash.

There’s a cold calculation to Dhar’s idea of Pakistan, and of male Muslim identity. As soon as Hamza reaches Karachi, he’s attacked by a gang of Pashtun rapists, the first in a long line of sadists, swindlers and psychopaths. The Baloch people—whose relations with the state have been historically fractious—are shown as the best of a bad bunch, but even they’re discarded eventually. There’s a reason India is so distant in Dhurandhar—it allows the film’s barbarism to be seen as Pakistan’s barbarism. Early on, a Pakistani hijacker taunts Sanyal, saying, “Hindus are cowardly, aren’t they?" There’s barely a Hindu in the whole film, but these are the lines along which Dhar wants you thinking.

'Dhurandhar’ is in theatres.

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