Dhurandhar: The Revenge is in U.S. theaters now.
A film that peaks in its prologue, Aditya Dhar’s hyper-violent Dhurandhar: The Revenge is a rushed, overlong, blood-soaked sequel to Dhurandhar (or “Stalwart”), which was equally vicious, but far more polished and propulsive. While intended to be a single production, the decision was made late in the process to split the spy saga in two. The three-and-a-half-hour first part went on to become the highest-grossing Hindi film in India after its December release. It even earned more worldwide than the Telugu-language global megahit RRR. Dhar’s nearly four-hour follow-up seems poised to break the box office yet again. This should come as no surprise — certainly not to an industry that toes the party line — but while the movie’s naked political propaganda will appeal to its core audience, it’s sure to repulse many others. Just be careful not to voice your displeasure.
More: Dhurandhar 1 Review
When the first film ended, undercover Indian agent in Pakistan, Hamza Ali Mazari (a lion-maned Ranveer Singh), had just dispensed with friend and charismatic political ally Rehman Dakait (Akshaye Khanna), positioning him as the penultimate gangster of Karachi’s gang-torn Lyari district, just behind Rehman’s cousin Uzair (Danish Pandor). Dhar’s brutal mob movie attempted to justify any and all violent reprisal on screen by re-writing Dakait — a real person — as having a hand in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks (or “26/11”), a vital stitch in the movie’s political fabric. His sequel largely follows Hamza’s continued rampage, as he both climbs the Pakistani political ladder and hacks down every rung along the way, positioning the country’s entire infrastructure as one big scheme to infiltrate and destroy India and its Hindu majority.
The first film was hardly subtle about its bent towards Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism, but The Revenge is much more overtly made to flatter the court in grand Shakespearean fashion. It’s rife with tragedy that fawns at the feet of India’s current strongman Prime Minister, Narendra Modi — whose image features in multiple news clips, and who the villains lament as heroic savior — and his ruling party, the BJP. However, the problem with the sequel (which is to say, one of many) is that it forgets to have much by way of a human soul in service of its political proclamations. That it begins with a quote from the Bhagavad Gita, the central Hindu scripture, is all the more naked an attempt to subsume all discernible drama into the broad milieu of India’s religious right. Moral dilemmas don’t really matter when the one, true guiding morality is Big Brother.
The exception comes in the form of the movie’s unrelenting prologue, which introduces Hamza before he was Hamza, i.e. when he was still a skinny ne’er-do-well in India’s Punjab region. His real name, the film reveals, is Jaskirat Singh Rangi, which eagle-eyed Bollywood fans will recognize as a reference to one of Dhar’s previous films about Indian soldiers infiltrating Pakistan, Uri: The Surgical Strike. This is neither the last reference to Dhar’s other jingoistic landmark, nor the most obvious; the film pays as much tribute to current political leadership as it does to the cinematic propaganda that arose in its wake, as though they were one and the same. However, by detailing Hamza/Jaskirat’s past as a military dropout hell-bent on revenge for attacks on his sisters, the film sets up a fascinating arc about a man torn between family and patriotism. It’s a great place to start, made all the more bombastic by scenes of Hamza shooting off people’s noses, and even delivering an upward headshot by way of a man’s testicles; points for inventiveness. However, the film doesn’t end up making good on this dramatic promise. Dhurandhar: The Revenge isn’t really a story about dilemma or spiritual conflict; presenting Hamza as a man even slightly tempted to waver from his mission to avenge 26/11 would hardly suit Dhar’s large-scale agitprop.
The Revenge was completed at the last minute, and boy does it show.“
Back in the movie’s present — spanning 2009 to about 2016 — Hamza’s undercover tale of manipulating his allies moves at a million miles an hour, but lacks the personal ties that made its predecessor tick. With his friend Dakait dead, and his wife Yalina (Sara Arjun) reduced to a background character for much of the runtime, Hamza’s steely resolve isn’t given the kind of emotional grounding that might make his journey interesting. Instead, we’re presented with scene after scene of explosive violence against faceless, nameless enemies whose only defining trait is that the Indian government has deemed them expendable in the name of national security. In the movie’s purview, this is ultimate permission for carnage, and the only one really necessary.
A legitimate tether to Hamza’s past appears some 90 minutes in, threatening a more interesting dramatic arc that lashes him between thoughts of then and now, but this subplot is quickly swept under the rug. Similarly, the central antagonist, Pakistani terrorist and intelligence operative Major Iqbal (Arjun Rampal), is given some semblance of broken domestic drama that seeks to reflect the idea of being torn between family and nationalistic duty. But since the film doesn’t actually pull the trigger on this arc for Hamza, this leaves Iqbal’s story feeling entirely perfunctory. Instead of the hero and villain being each other’s thematic foils, Iqbal’s M.O. ends up reduced to threats of religious circumcision, and the idea that he might force every Hindu in India to read from the Quran. You know, just in case you missed who the movie’s bad guys are meant to be.
Rather than human drama, what we’re presented with in The Revenge is unrelenting on-screen text detailing the who, what, when, where and why of the movie’s flimsy historicity, en route to the next set piece of explosive dismemberment. It’s more of a political leaflet than a real movie at times, drawing from Hollywood hallmarks like the climactic assassinations in The Godfather, which it practically turns into chintzy magazine covers with the sheer amount of graphic design it employs.
As Hamza plays political puppeteer, a strange irony emerges. His constantly giving rival gangs and ethnic groups scapegoats to hate, all so he can amass more power, becomes an unintended reflection of the film’s own mechanics as Hindutva propaganda. The Revenge is so blinkered by its unapologetic Islamophobia that it fails to recognize how it gradually becomes a metaphor for itself. Compared to the far-superior first film, it has nothing else to really offer, which is why so much of the sequel seems dedicated to characters propagating bizarre falsehoods — like the BJP’s political rivals, and even India’s universities, being secretly funded by terror cells — which serves no dramatic purpose beyond helping the ruling party accumulate more real-world support.
For better or worse, the first Dhurandar had a sense of musical splendor, between modern Arabic Hip Hop tracks and upbeat remixes of old Bollywood tunes to evoke a souped-up nostalgia. The sequel, which comes out just three months later, feels much more temp-tracked in its soundscape and editing (every scene goes on a little too long), and never quite lives up to its predecessor’s aesthetic allure. That it begins in bleak, explosive territory is certainly inviting for those who enjoy this mode of cinema, but it stays at exactly the same level of violence and melodrama for nearly four hours, without much modulation. The result is a headache, to say the least. In a minor bit of relief, things at least get funny on occasion, thanks to the comedy stylings of Rakesh Bedi as a bumbling Pakistani politician, but he may be the movie’s only saving grace.
The Revenge was completed at the last minute, and boy does it show: A big, expensive studio production shouldn’t be released in theaters with such sloppy moment-to-moment assembly and mismatched sound design in its hour-long action climax. Then again, when you’re preaching to an eager choir, real artistry doesn’t matter nearly as much as fanning the flames of hatred and telling people exactly what they want to hear.
