The soul of Dhurandhar is rooted in quiet deception.

Wait, I’m talking about Hamza Ali Mazari’s (Ranveer Singh) mission. He’s a spy operating across borders in this 214-minute film, and given this running time and the number of characters, motivations and political threads it handles, this film could very easily have collapsed into something rambling and frustrating. But it doesn’t, largely thanks to a smart structural decision: chapter segregation. The eight chapters keep the narrative in control, allowing the film to introduce competent characters like SP Aslam and Rehman Dakait as formidable, thinking opponents rather than fragile villains. The nuanced performances help too. Akshaye Khanna is potent, yes, but also so human in confusion and rage.

It is interesting that this film, which invests time and thought in constructing these antagonists, is far less subtle about identifying what it believes to be India’s larger problem at the time: its own government. On paper, this sounds like a provocative, welcome idea. I mean, wouldn’t we rather that power be questioned? But the film answers this cynicism with the suggestion of an alternative saviour figure waiting in the wings. Given the deep worry lines etched on Ajay Sanyal’s face (a terrific look for R. Madhavan), you’d expect a man far more suspicious of political redemption. But Dhurandhar isn’t interested in that kind of character, that kind of film.

I liked that through Ajay, it seems to recognise the psychological toll of espionage. “We have to get it right every time; they have to get it right only once,” Ajay says, and the line really lands when you see how patiently Hamza’s rise gets tracked in this film. How slowly, carefully he melds into Pakistan by playing a long game of trust. For this reason, if nothing else, the runtime felt earned for me. This mission IS, by design, long and convoluted. Even the love angle that I had my doubts about in the beginning, gets integrated with political subtext, the woman getting used as much for leverage as she is for ‘love’.

And yet, Dhurandhar repeatedly interrupts its own intelligence with indulgences that feel designed not to deepen Hamza, but to reassure the audience. A pub song. An extended police chase at night. Another romantic interruption. These moments don’t necessarily allow Hamza to reveal vulnerability, nor do they meaningfully complicate his disguise. Instead, they seem intent on reminding us that this is still a star vehicle. No matter how dense the politics, no matter how difficult the terrain, the hero still feels invincible. And this film and its story deserved more vulnerability and humaneness, I thought.

And this, for me, is the film’s biggest missed opportunity. Hamza’s physical resilience is amped up and valourised, but the psychological cost of this life feels more implied than explored. He is treated less as a person than as a perfect instrument, and this choice robs him of his humanity. Strangely enough, the film shows way more curiosity toward the interior lives of its villains than its hero. Rehman Dakait is allowed loss, humiliation, rage, insecurity, envy. Hamza is allowed purpose. Yes, Hamza isn’t in a position to express himself openly to others, but surely, the film could have found ways to make his interiority clearer to us?

Aditya Dhar shoots action with fantastic impact and urgency. The sequence in which Rehman Dakait seeks vengeance is perhaps my most favourite in this film. It’s gorgeously mounted with the city really coming across as a horrific, suffocating organism. Top-angle shots show velocity and chaos; the dirt, the blood, the panic… everything feels earned. Espionage and gang wars aren’t pretty, and the film really understands this. The no-rules violence, including eye-gouging, biting, and savage interrogations… there’s a rawness that’s hard to deny.

But I do think that the film gets a little too carried away with this brutality. A finger is chopped off during interrogation, then another, and then, yet another… At one point, I did feel a bit numbed. The violence in itself is justified, given the premise, but I’m talking about the excess failing to cause any real impact after a while. For some reason, I remembered the Joker saying: “Never start with the head. He can’t feel the next— See?!”

I enjoyed the music choices a lot. Retro tracks and EDM beats lend this film a gleeful, amoral texture that makes this complicated world, oddly accessible. Much like Animal, the music choice adds a seductive quality to the violence. I do think that there’s a genuinely talented, nuanced filmmaker here, one who seems to understand power, desire, and corruption, one who shows a real talent for cinematic drama. But the film’s chest-thumping objectives do keep pulling him back.

This is particularly evident in how the film, that’s about such complexity, is happy to make simplistic, binary conclusions. There are rhetorical questions like, “Are Hindus cowards?” Its allegiance is clear even in these passing moments. There’s also the romanticisation of a vengeful, grey protagonist, which means that the film can proudly assert that a ‘new India’ is one that enters other people’s homes to terminate them. The film sees this not as tragedy, not even as necessary moral compromise, but as heroism, as progress. Aditya Dhar shows enough writing ability to be able to do better than this… if he wanted. In a world where every side believes itself victimised, justified, righteous, isn’t such certainty most frightening?

Perhaps Aditya Dhar knows exactly what he’s doing. Perhaps Dhurandhar, like Hamza himself, is operating under an artful disguise. It’s layered enough to appear complex, clever enough to deflect easy accusations, never naive enough to declare objectives openly. The soul of Dhurandhar, as I said, is rooted in a kind of quiet deception.