But, even at its most flaccid, Dhurandhar The Revenge is a Ranveer Singh show all the way. He’s in almost every frame, and powers the conclusion with fury. If the table-setting first film demanded he be relegated to the background for the most part, The Revenge sees him front and centre.
Much is said about his “range”—the soft stillness of Lootere and Gully Boy to the uncontainable dynamism of Simmba and Padmaavat. Dhurandhar sees Ranveer Singh examine both in a compelling portrait of a man wearing so many masks, he’s scared to face what’s underneath.
It helps that Dhar proves he’s one of the few aura-farming filmmakers from Hindi cinema who can deliver. He can “present” stars, and root scale and swag in gut-punch emotional conviction. But Dhar’s great talent is his ability to get an audience’s blood boiling like few others.
Not since Uri: The Surgical Strike have I been in a packed theatre with audiences of all ages watching stomach-churning violence and rooting for it.
Any sense of surprise, narrative newness, compelling conflicts, and enjoyable twists are all reserved for the second half of The Revenge.
Hamza encounters a familiar face from his past life, which complicates matters, for example, and the pay-off is another impressive fight sequence. The violence lands because both characters are reluctant toward it. The emotional stakes feel real. Similarly, a showdown with his wife Yalina (Sara Arun is given more to do this time) that follows is among the most human moments Hamza and his bloody crusade are awarded.
The larger problem plaguing The Revenge is the lack of a worthy foil for Hamza. The Revenge has a serious antagonist problem, and by extension an Akshay Khanna-sized hole. After the simmering joys of Rehman Dakait, The Revenge isn’t able to muster a similarly towering figure.
As for the film’s incendiary agenda and ragebait ethos, The Revenge expectedly just doubles down on the propaganda.
As teased last time, a key part of the saga here is a buildup to the “masterstroke”—and the apparent victory of demonetisation. It’s not just the film’s framing of fiction as fact that’s unsettling, or that the Muslim population (on both sides of the border) are demonised to no end. It’s that the government glorification sequences are just clunky and feel gimmicky. It’s why the undercover spy story is far more engaging than the India story.
And that remains the real genius of Dhar’s sprawling saga. That he ties the fate of the nation to one man’s brutal rise to power within a thunderous gangster narrative. As if beards and biceps and hypermasculine masala cinema as the genre of the moment wasn’t dominating enough, Deshbhakti KGF meets patriotic Pushpa.
Dhurandhar The Revenge releases in theatres worldwide on 19 March.
(Suchin Mehrotra is a critic and film journalist who covers Indian cinema for a range of publications. He’s also the host of The Streaming Show podcast on his own YouTube channel. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
