Dhurandhar - Ghayal, Ghatak, Kasainuma, Mashallah

In 1983, a typical Hrishikesh Mukherjee comedy called Rang Birangi was released, starring Amol Palekar, Parveen Babi, Farooque Shaikh and Deepti Naval. It also had the peerless Utpal Dutt playing the role of a police inspector called Dhurandhar Bhatawdekar. That idiosyncratic name has stuck with me all these years, lurking in my subconscious mind, till it was revived by this week's release titled Dhurandhar. But any similarities between that movie and this begin and end with that. Aditya Dhar's Dhurandhar and Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Rang Birangi are about as diametrically opposite on the cinematic spectrum as it can get - one a genteel simple comedy, the other a blood-drenched complex action thriller. George Washington and the current demolisher-in-chief of the White House come to mind as analogous in that level of differential.

That's not a knock by any means on Dhurandhar. It's a visceral gut punch of a movie that rivets your attention and warrants a completely empty bladder before watching its 3hr 34 min runtime. Aditya Dhar who earlier directed Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and wrote Article 370 (2024), has made one of the most unusually set movies in Indian cinema. For almost all of its duration, it is based almost exclusively in Pakistan. Inspired by incredible true events as it says at the start, it begins with the December 1999 hijack of Indian Airlines Flight 814 to Kandahar, Afghanistan. That seminal event on the last day of the previous century (the saga ended on Dec 31) and the capitulation of the then Vajpayee government to the hijacker's demands, which included the release of several notorious Pakistani terrorists including Masood Azhar (founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed), led to the subsequent 2001 attack on the Indian parliament, the 26/11 attack on Mumbai and other terrorist attacks that reverberate till today.

IB Chief Ajay Sanyal (played by R Madhavan, based on Ajit Doval) who swallows his pride that day, sets into motion Operation Dhurandhar to have an Indian asset infiltrate Karachi's underworld gangs, as they are seen as the conduit for the arms, ammunition and money to the ISI-terrorist nexus. That agent called Hamza Ali Mazari, a Baloch, (played by a long maned Ranveer Singh) comes to Lyari Town, a notorious area of Karachi, rife with gangs and their internecine warfare. He then inveigles himself into the gang of Rehman Baloch aka Rehman Dakait (a supremely confident Akshaye Khanna). That puts him into the heart of darkness and in contact with clinically cold hearted ISI Major Iqbal (a silver toothed Arjun Rampal), local politico Jameel Jamali (a wonderfully smarmy Rakesh Bedi) and his nubile daughter (debutant Sara Arjun), and corrupt exiled cop SP Chaudhary Aslam (profanity spewing Sanjay Dutt, remembering "mothers" and "sisters" in equal measure, if you catch my drift). Comedian Gaurav Gera of TV Series Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahi (2003-2006) fame is unrecognizable as restaurant owner Mohammad Aalam shouting the hilarious line “Darling darling dil kyu toda, thoda peelo peelo doodh soda!” in his intro.

Coming to the much discussed violence and gore in the movie, which makes Animal (2023) seem like a Disney cartoon by comparison, yes it's there - and when it is there, it's there in spades. But it's not a sustained assault on the senses like the last 30 minutes of Chhaava (2025), which was gore porn for lack of a better phrase. Here it comes in patches and doesn't last long in each instance. But queasy stomachs are forewarned - this is testosterone on steroids. The infamous torture scene from the trailer is immediately after the interval so get back quickly from your restroom break and hold on to your popcorn and soda.

Now that we have that elephant in the room addressed, let's get to the banger of a soundtrack. Shashwat Sachdev, who seems to be a fixture in all Aditya Dhar movies, is on a roll this year having provided the music for the Netflix series The Ba***ds of Bollywood with its infectious earworm of a track called "Ghafoor". In Dhurandhar, he has composed original songs here like the romantic ballad "Gehra hua" and the item song "Shararat" as well as remixes of old classics like "Monica O my darling", "Rambha ho" and an absolutely killer version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dV23pgH3Ng ) of that mother of all qawwalis, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCb8iLhVz9c ) "Na to karvaan ki talaash hai" from Barsaat Ki Raat (1960), that is the intro music to Ranveer's character. Also like Bobby Deol swaying to the Persian melody "Jamaal Kudu" in Animal, there is Akshaye Khanna dancing to the Bahraini song "Fa9la" by rapper Flipperachi when entering the Baloch stronghold.

The acting is uniformly good by all the actors in this movie's huge ensemble, but special mention to Akshaye for his glowering menace (when he mouths "Rehman Dakait ki diyi hui maut badi kasainuma hoti hai" you know he means business) and Ranveer when he says, what is ostensibly an homage to Sunny Deol movies, "Ghayal hoon isliye ghatak hoon". Ranveer brings an intensity to the role in both his raw physicality as well as its mental strength and vulnerability. It's truly a stalwart urf Dhurandhar performance.

December 8, 2025