It is a cultural quirk of Indian cinema that they will show the most gruesome torture and murders in glorious close-up while simultaneously subtitling the language used during these scenes as “Dang!” and “You idiot!” If we are in a hard-R/18 environment, capable of being shown a man suspended off the floor by hooks through the skin of his face, and then having those hooks ripped out, we are equally capable of reading the actual language being used while that horrible thing is happening. But in this Westerner’s opinion it’s worse that Indian cinema has a tendency to mix genuine footage of terror attacks, including real corpses and audio footage of people being killed, into heavily fictionalised versions of events. When real human deaths and live news footage is shown in service of a fictional plot, entertainment should not be the point. All that said, Dhurandhar is a wild and very violent depiction of one man’s attempts to sabotage a terrorist enterprise from within. There’s enough mayhem and death here to cheer up anyone who thinks they’re having their own hard time at work, but unfortunately that doesn’t make most of what’s on show here much good.
He calls himself Hamza (Ranveer Singh, the proud owner of a head of hair most people would kill for) and arrives in the Pakistani city of Lyari with nothing but a backpack and instructions to find a singing juice seller called Aalam (Gaurav Gera). In case we thought Lyari was a friendly place, on arrival Hamza is robbed, sexually assaulted and very nearly raped in the street as Aalam watches but does nothing. But Aalam is undercover too, and as they work together to study the rival gang networks which control the city, they realise that, due to tribal loyalties, Hamza’s only way in is to work for the terrifying Rehman Baloch (Akshaye Khanna). How terrifying is Rehman? When he learned he was the illegitimate son of one of the city’s other major gangsters, he immediately killed his mother. Later, when Rehman has the chance to solidify his position in the city, he does so by beating his father’s brains out in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses. This is not implied, but shown in such gruesome detail that the audience around me was laughing as a coping mechanism. Mr. Khanna goes from calm suit-wearing zero to blood-soaked ninety as viciously as Al Pacino or Robert De Niro ever did. But Rehman is also a dad, and when Hamza saves one of his sons from a machine-gun attack at a wedding, he gives Hamza a job. Now all Hamza has to do is stay alive while working from the inside to take these charmers down.
But it’s not all Hamza enthusiastically participating in the gunrunning, counterfeiting, political machinations and other evil things happening. He also finds the time to date the young daughter, Yalina (Sara Arjun) of a local politician, Jameel (Rakesh Bedi), who is very good indeed at maintaining his power. Now Yalina might be a little naive, and she certainly doesn’t know the whole story of what the men in her lives are up to, but she reacts to a potential breakup by informing Hamza “if you ever ask me to leave again, I’ll burn you alive in your sleep.” So at least we don’t need to worry about her. Thanks to his relationship with Yalina, Hamza is able to align with Jameel and anti-corruption cop SP Chaudhary Aslam [and real person] (Sanjay Dutt having a wonderful time) to move against Rehman. There is so much double-crossing it’s hard to keep things straight, but all the drama leads to an really extensive shootout in a forest. How extensive? Not only do various people run out of ammunition and have to stab each other with tree branches, but also one man uses two machine guns and a vest covered in grenades to kill his enemies while screaming “Come to daddy.”
While this is all much too much, this violence is vastly preferable to the faceless, indifferent nihilism that most Hollywood violence consists of these days. There’s nothing indifferent in Aditya Dhar’s script and direction, as Hamza personally witnesses the ways a terror network enacts various atrocities which really did happen. It also has to be said this is as uncomfortably bloodthirsty as anything made in the west during the cold war, with the Indian fighters only being bad because the nasty Pakistanis have driven them to it. There’s only one side here and Dhurandhar knows exactly who its audience is.
And yet, for a movie that’s supposed to impress us with the lengths India will go to in order to protect its citizens, Dhurandhar leaves a pretty dirty taste in the mouth. It’s very hard to play fair with terrorists who will, as in the opening scene, cut the throat of a hostage out of spite, but nobody is even trying to be the bigger person here. The handsomeness and superstar presence of Mr. Singh, who is forty playing twenty-five, goes a long way to soften any misgivings about Hamza’s behaviour, and it must be said that he makes Hamza’s feelings for Yalina feel genuine. Still, it’s pretty clear the sequel, Dhurandar: Revenge, which is being released in March, will have to work hard to redeem its hero. The title doesn’t leave a lot of room for optimism there though.
Dhurandhar is now in theaters.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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