The divisive Bollywood thriller about Indian spies working undercover in Pakistan captivated audiences for months in rival South Asian countries, drew audiences worldwide and became the highest-grossing Hindi-language film of all time in both India and North America. Now the audience is eager for the sequel.
“Dhurandhar”, which translates to “stalwart”, became India’s highest-grossing film after its release in December last year. It later topped the Netflix chart for non-English films after its January 30 release on the platform — including in Pakistan, where authorities criticized it as Indian propaganda and the film was publicly banned.
The second installment of the two-part film, “Dhurandhar: The Revenge,” which arrives in theaters including the United States on Thursday, has sold over a million dollars in advance sales in India.
Directed by Aditya Dhar, the “Dhurandhara” films come amid heightened tensions between Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, the nuclear-armed neighbors who fought their worst conflict in decades over four days last May. It is the latest in a string of box office hits with overt nationalist messages since India’s Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi took office in 2014, including “The Kashmir Files” and “The Kerala Story,” as well as Dhar’s previous films “Uri: The Surgical Strike” and “Article 370.”
Running for more than 3 1/2 hours, “Dhurandhar” stars Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh as Indian activist Hanja Ali Mazari on a dangerous mission in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, the capital of Sindh province. Audiences have praised the film’s star-studded, heart-pounding action scenes and catchy soundtrack, but Pakistani officials say its depiction of gang violence is unfair to Karachi’s working-class neighborhood of Lyari.
After the film’s release in December, the Sindh government said it was supporting what it described as a protest film dubbed “Indian propaganda” for “Dhurandhara”.
“Lyari stands for culture, peace and resilience – not violence,” it said in a statement.
Although banned in Pakistan, “Dhurandhara” is reported to be widely pirated there. The film became so popular that a video of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s son MLA Bilawal Bhutto Zardari entering the event to one of the film’s trending songs went viral.
“Dhurandhar” has been criticized for its association with real events such as the 2001 terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament and the 2008 Mumbai city terror attacks. In the opening scene, it refers to the hijacking of an Indian passenger plane by Pakistani terrorists in 1999, believed to be by the fictional Indian intelligence chief Ajayi. Security adviser and key negotiator of the 1999 kidnapping – decides to send Hamza on his mission as revenge.
“When a story is inspired by real events and complex geopolitical realities, the purpose and responsibility must match the cinematic ambition,” said Jyoti Deshpande, president of Mumbai-based Geo Studios and one of the producers of “Dhurandhara”.
“Our approach was to present a more nuanced take on patriotism, while being more engaging through immersive storytelling that allowed viewers to invest in the narrative, regardless of geography,” Deshpande said in emailed comments.
Despite being banned by all six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, “Dhurandhar” has found a large Netflix audience in several Arab countries, over its perceived anti-Pakistan message.
“The audience didn’t just see it, they interacted with it, discussed it and made it their own,” Deshpande said. “That kept the momentum going for two months.”
At times, the debate surrounding the film has gotten ugly, leading the Film Critics Guild of India to condemn the “targeted attack” on professional film critics.
As soon as “Dhurandhara” was released, the online conversation around it shifted from the film itself to a “barbaric battle of ideologies”, said Indian film critic Sucharita Tyagi, who was harassed over her review.
Some critics criticized Tyagi’s depiction of the film as propaganda, saying it diminished the emotional impact of what was considered a strong tribute to the sacrifices of Indians in the name of national security.
“It was illuminating to see how many people refused to engage with a point of view that didn’t match theirs,” he said in a Zoom interview. “I’ve had to turn off comments on Instagram and YouTube and I’ve never had to do that before.”
Nationalist films like “Dhurandhara” run the risk of encouraging a form of patriotic fervor that deepens animosity between India and Pakistan, Tyagi said.
“The problem is when you incite an audience, and instead of promoting a message of humanity, you’re promoting anger among people who are already angry,” he said.
“No one should watch a movie and be left with that kind of anger.”
