Note: I’m forgoing giving Dhurandhar a star-rating as it feels too reductive for a problematic subject.
Dhurandhar is not subtle, which is a big part of its charm. Its action is thrilling. Its emotional tension is off the charts. All major characters have their own motivations that overlap through a tangled web of politics, tribal affiliations, organized crime, terrorism, and blood ties.
That lack of subtlety is also Dhurandhar‘s downfall, as the agenda behind the film glares on a bright red screen. This is more than just storytelling. It’s provocation.
A recurring criticism of writer-director Aditya Dhar’s work is that he uses real-life tragedies to stoke sectarian anger. It’s the main reason that the Netflix Original horror film he wrote — Baramulla — didn’t work for me. The other Netflix Original movie he wrote — the romantic caper Dhoom Dhaam — is a wildly fun romp with no ulterior motives.
Inspired by multiple real-life terrorist attacks and actual political figures in Pakistan, Dhurandhar posits a “what if” scenario: what if India sent a spy to Pakistan to dismantle the terrorist networks from within? Success would require many years, flawless secrecy, and lots of luck for said spy to be in a position right at the intersection of the various parties that enable terrorism to thrive within Pakistan.
That spy is Hamza Ali Mazari (Ranveer Singh). He makes his way to Karachi’s Lyari neighborhood, a hotbed of politics and organized crime with an outsized influence on the city at large. He bides his time working at a juice shop run by another Indian spy, Mohammad Aalam (Gaurav Gera).
Hamza gets the attention of gangster Rehman Dakait (Akshaye Khanna) when he tries to protect Dakait’s two sons from an assassination attempt. Though Dakait’s older son is slain, the gangster brings Hamza into his crew as a reward for saving his youngest. Again, Hamza bides his time to gains Dakait’s trust, but he’s where he needs to be for his mission to succeed.
Dhar does a masterful job connecting all the threads that create the web that supports terrorism in Pakistan. A gangster like Dakait has access to the weapons needed by the terror cells that are encouraged by Pakistan’s ISI spy agency. But Dakait also wants the legitimacy and power that comes from a political position, and local politics are driven by sects and ethnic groups. There are dozens of individuals and factions that need to be considered in every decision, and the consequences for angering the wrong people can be deadly.
The acting across the board is terrific. Singh’s Hamza is the perfect blend of smart and tough. Khanna’s gaunt Dakait moves through the world like a hungry animal. Sanjay Dutt’s disgraced police officer SP Chaudhary Aslam enters the story like a wrecking ball — yet another deadly force to account for.
To better understand how Dhurandhar veers into trouble, I looked at another film about a decade-long effort to hunt terrorists in Pakistan: the 2012 Hollywood film Zero Dark Thirty. (That movie is also problematic in the way it promotes torture as a legitimate method of intelligence gathering, which it’s not.) Director Kathryn Bigelow uses some of the same storytelling techniques as Dhar does, but to very different effect.
Zero Dark Thirty opens with a black screen emblazoned with “September 11, 2001” written in white letters. Audio plays of police radio chatter and emergency services calls from that morning. We hear people as they realize planes have crashed into the World Trade Center. A frightened woman inside one of the buildings asks an emergency dispatcher, “I’m going to die, aren’t I?” As horrible as the recordings are, they remind the audience of the fear and disbelief everyone in America experienced that morning — all in about 80 seconds.
Dhurandhar likewise opens with refreshers on two major terrorist attacks: the hijacking of IC 814 in 1999 and the attack on India’s Parliament in 2001. However, Dhar reenacts these events onscreen in gory detail. An Indian citizen aboard the hijacked plane is executed in front of India’s negotiator (Intelligence Bureau Director Ajay Sanyal, played by R. Madhavan), but the man’s throat isn’t just slit. It’s sawed at. After the terrorists attack Parliament, a dead security guard is wheeled by Sanyal, her vacant eyes seeming to stare at him imploringly. The two sequences take up the first twenty minutes of the film, before Hamza is even introduced.
In the second half of Dhurandhar, Dhar employs the same technique that Bigelow used to start her film. It follows a lengthy scene in which Dakait’s gang, some terrorists, and a Pakistani spy chief played by Arjun Rampal was the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai on TV. They cheer “Allahu Akbar!” as they watch news footage of the attacks. (Somehow, none of the terrorists notices Hamza crying during the scene.)
Even though the audience has just watched footage of 26/11 cheered by gleeful Muslim terrorists, Dhar stops the whole story to emphasize that the attack really happened. Black text on a blazing red background reads: “Actual Recordings Between Handlers, Terrorists & Hostages; 26th November 2008.” Approximately 80 seconds of audio recordings of communication between the terrorists are accompanied by onscreen transcription.
Even though Bigelow and Dhar use almost exactly the same amount of audio material, the gimmick stops Dhurandhar‘s story so abruptly that it feels like a cliffhanger ending to the film — but the movie still has another hour to go. The choice makes so little narrative sense that it all but confirms that telling a story isn’t the movie’s primary goal.
Links
- Dhurandhar at Wikipedia
- Dhurandhar at IMDb
- My review of Baramulla
- My review of Dhoom Dhaam
- Zero Dark Thirty at Wikipedia
