Dhurandhar Review - IGN
Breathtakingly bold and unsettling, Aditya Dhar’s star-studded gangster epic Dhurandhar (meaning “Stalwart”) sits at the edge of Bollywood’s recent surge of jingoistic action films that flirt with Islamophobic tropes. Yet this one isn’t merely adequate or derivative; at times it feels brilliantly intense, which is precisely what makes it so provocative. The result is a sprawling three-and-a-half-hour spy odyssey filled with blood, torture, and gruesome violence that can feel closer to a horror playground than a conventional thriller. It’s ugly and magnetic in equal measure.
Promising to be “inspired by incredible true events” (a claim that strains credibility), Dhurandhar follows an Indian military operative who goes undercover in Pakistan during the mid-2000s, taking the alias Hamza Ali Mazari (portrayed with stoic intensity by Ranveer Singh). He claws his way up from a juice stall to Karachi’s intricate political lanes, infiltrating a local mafia network with links to both domestic parties and international terror outfits. The espionage tale then mutates into a raw, bone-crunching action saga, layered with shifting loyalties and morally muddy choices. Yet the film sacrifices plausible spycraft in service of high-octane spectacle. Some will cheer the energy; others will lament the missing craft of traditional espionage.
As years pass, Hamza grows emotionally entangled with his targets. Yet it becomes increasingly apparent—even if not to the conflicted anti-hero—that his associates are orchestrating a real-world terror attack in Mumbai in 2008. Historically, this topic hasn’t been treated with much competence in cinema, whether in Bollywood’s exaggerated The Attacks of 26/11 (2013), the French-Belgian drama Taj Mahal (2015), or Hollywood’s Hotel Mumbai (2019). Dhurandhar may push this conversation forward, though it fabricates some tall tales of its own along the way.
The film’s proximity to reality also stirs controversy. Several characters appear to be drawn from real people—Akshaye Khanna’s intense Rehman Dakait, a Karachi gangster and family man who mentors Hamza; Sanjay Dutt’s Chaudhary Aslam, a revered Pakistani police officer depicted here with a tainted opportunism. Other characters are clearly inspired by real figures, such as Arjun Rampal’s Major Iqbal (modeled after the terrorist Ilyas Kashmiri) and R. Madhavan’s stern spymaster Ajay Sanyal, who pushes Hamza toward exits from India and reflects traits associated with India’s National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval. Hamza, however, has no directly identified real counterpart; some rumors have circulated but no confirmed link exists.
Dhurandhar unfolds as a three-and-a-half-hour sprint with enough visceral action to rival the most brutal thrillers. Its use of archival footage and purported phone recordings from real terror events is provocative, sometimes unsettling, and raises questions about the ethics of blending fact and fiction. At moments, the film leans into a provocative parallel with other controversial dramas that compress real history into fiction to evoke strong emotions within India’s current political climate and its tensions with Pakistan, along with the ongoing scrutiny of Indian Muslim communities. Early exchanges frame Sanyal’s negotiations with hijackers as a fight to preserve Hindu-majority national unity against perceived Islamic threats. Later emotional milestones show Hamza encountering known terrorists during a call to prayer, or recalling their “Allahu Akbar” declarations as he’s beaten, fueling a mixture of personal grievance and anti-Islamic fury. The film exudes a nihilistic energy that few December releases manage to match. Even the lone glimmer of optimism—Sanyal’s expectation of a tougher anti-corruption government—reads as a sly nod to contemporary political currents in India and the BJP’s rise that followed the events depicted.
Yet Dhar’s filmmaking chops are undeniable, even as the movie leans into Hindutva-adjacent perspectives. Hamza emerges as a compelling centerpiece in a relentlessly brisk thriller, oscillating between political maneuvering and brutal confrontations as he navigates Lyari, a Karachi neighborhood marked by ethnic tensions. Singh delivers restrained emotion in key scenes, while maintaining relentless momentum through explosive set pieces. He builds a tense camaraderie with the gangster targets and even a controversial romantic thread with Yalina (Sara Arjun), the younger daughter of a rival political figure.
Unlike many prestige thrillers, Dhurandhar avoids painting Hamza as a pure hero. Instead, he is portrayed as a calculating schemer, which adds moral ambiguity to his eventual reversal against the gang he once aligned with. Khanna delivers a breakthrough performance as a father-first, urban militant-second, bringing a new depth to a career icon. The film’s precision is such that, even with a cliffhanger hinting at a sequel (Part 2 lands March 19th), the momentum remains high, leaving audiences energized rather than exhausted by the mid-credits tease.
The soundtrack and sound design amplify the spectacle, with contemporary Indian and Arabic hip-hop influences weaving through the score and remixes of classic Bollywood tracks. Dhurandhar channels Dhar’s signature brutal edge while injecting it with a frenzied exuberance born from morally fraught impulses. If the cognitive dissonance is manageable, the payoff can be substantial: the action is relentless, the visuals sharp, and Vikash Nowlakha’s cinematography bathes every frame in cool, perpetual-twilight hues, suggesting a world where personal ethics are sacrificed to a grand, nationalistic rhetoric that justifies violence in pursuit of dramatic, stylized cinema. It is undeniably, disturbingly effective in every sense.
Verdict
Dhurandhar walks a tightrope between raucous entertainment and propagandistic provocation. Loaded with more blood and gore than a slaughterhouse, it stands as one of the year’s most ferociously engaging thrillers—an audacious, fictional counterpoint to real-world events that feels like a Kalashnikov-flavored Forrest Gump of the modern era.
