A divisive Bollywood thriller about an Indian spy working undercover in Pakistan has captivated audiences in the rival South Asian nations for months, drawing viewers worldwide and becoming the highest-grossing Hindi-language film ever in both India and North America. Now audiences are bracing for the sequel.
“Dhurandhar,” which translates to “Stalwart,” became India’s highest-grossing film last year after its release in December. It then topped the Netflix chart for non-English films after its Jan. 30 release on the platform — including in Pakistan, where officials criticized it as Indian propaganda and the film was publicly banned.
The second installment of the two-part film, “Dhurandhar: The Revenge” arrives Thursday in theaters, including in the United States, with millions of dollars in presales in India.
Directed by Aditya Dhar, the “Dhurandhar” films come amid heightened tensions between Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, nuclear-armed neighbors that fought their worst conflict in decades over four days last May. It is the latest in a series of box-office hits with overt nationalist messaging 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.”
In “Dhurandhar,” which runs more than 3 1/2 hours, Bollywood star Ranveer Singh plays Hamza Ali Mazari, an Indian operative on a dangerous mission in Karachi, a Pakistani port city that is the capital of Sindh province. Audiences have praised the film’s star-studded cast, heart-pounding action scenes, and catchy soundtrack, but Pakistani authorities 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 backing what has been described as a rebuttal film to “Dhurandhar,” which it called “Indian propaganda.”
“Lyari stands for culture, peace, and resilience — not violence,” it said in a statement.
Despite being banned in Pakistan, “Dhurandhar” has reportedly been widely pirated there. The film is so popular that lawmaker Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was seen entering an event to one of the film’s trending songs in a video that went viral.
“Dhurandhar” has also been criticized over the way it blends cinema with real-life events such as the terrorist attacks on India’s Parliament in 2001 and on the city of Mumbai in 2008. In the opening scene, which references the 1999 hijacking of an Indian passenger plane by Pakistani terrorists, fictional Indian intelligence chief Ajay Sanyal — believed to be modeled after Ajit Doval, Modi’s national security adviser and the lead negotiator in the 1999 hijacking — decides to send Hamza on his mission as retribution.
“When a story is inspired by real events and complex geopolitical realities, intent and responsibility must go hand in hand with cinematic ambition,” said Jyoti Deshpande, president of Mumbai-based Jio Studios and one of the producers of “Dhurandhar.”
“Our approach was to present a more nuanced take on patriotism while at the same time remaining highly engaging through immersive storytelling that allowed viewers, regardless of geography, to be invested in the narrative,” Deshpande said in emailed comments.
“Dhurandhar” has also found a large Netflix audience in a number of Arab countries despite being banned by all six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, over its perceived anti-Pakistan messaging.
“Audiences didn’t just watch it, they interacted with it, debated it, and made it their own,” Deshpande said. “That is what sustained momentum two months in.”
At times, the debate around the film has gotten ugly, leading the Film Critics Guild of India to condemn “targeted attacks” on professional film critics.
Almost as soon as “Dhurandhar” was released, the online conversation around it shifted from the film itself to “an uncivil battle of ideologies,” said Sucharita Tyagi, an Indian movie critic who was harassed over her review.
Some commenters took issue with Tyagi’s description of the film as propaganda, saying it minimized the emotional impact of what they considered a forceful tribute to Indians’ sacrifices in the name of national security.
“To see how many people refused to engage with a point of view that was not aligned with theirs was illuminating,” she said in a Zoom interview. “It got so overwhelming that on Instagram and YouTube, I had to turn off the comments. And I’ve never had to do that before.”
Tyagi said nationalist films such as “Dhurandhar” risk encouraging a charged form of patriotism that deepens the hostility between India and Pakistan.
“The issue is when you incite an audience, and instead of propagating a message of humanity, you’re propagating the anger in a populace that’s already angry,” she said.
“No one should watch a film and leave it that kind of angry.”
