The times are coarse, unsettling and violent. So is anyone really surprised that some of Bollywood’s blockbusters in 2025 were coarse, unsettling and violent?
Two of the year’s biggest money-spinners had different themes, an actor in common – Akshaye Khanna as an antagonist – and a singular purpose: to pick at festering wounds and squeeze every bit of pus out of them. Several films in 2025 – among them Mohit Suri’s romance Saiyaara – beat the perception that Bollywood is losing audiences to dubbed films from the South or streaming shows. Chhaava and Dhurandhar went further.
They dialled up the anger, piled on the gore and made the case for righteous revenge against real and imagined foes. Even as they marshalled the same savvy and seductive storytelling techniques, though, they did not follow the typical beats of the average entertainer.
Instead, the films posed as serious, purposeful explorations of Indian history, both centuries-old and more recent. They consciously shrunk the gap between reality and imagination, captivating audiences in the bargain.
Let me tell you a story, these films said. The story will be unpleasant and even unbelievable, but trust us when we tell you that it actually happened – and we will show you what you were not allowed to see.
The films mirrored the Bharatiya Janata Party-led regime’s hardline ideology, exclusionary view of history and give-no-quarter politics. In the old days, sarkari cinema meant snore-inducing Films Division documentaries about steel plants and population control. The new sarkari film is coming out of Bollywood with every intention of startling viewers into attention – and submission.
Laxman Utekar’s Chhaava, about the Maratha emperor Sambhaji’s gory slaying by the Mughal ruler Aurangzeb, brought to Hindi cinema the savagery that Hollywood director Mel Gibson depicted in The Passion of the Christ (2004). Like Gibson, Utekar creates awe through shock. Chhaava depicts Sambhaji’s valour despite prolonged torture in excruciating detail, stoking outrage about Aurangzeb’s depravity centuries later.
Moviegoers couldn’t get enough of Chhaava. Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar is set to break box office records.
The ultraviolent film vastly improves on the slick propaganda that propelled his debut feature Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019). In Dhurandhar, an Indian spy codenamed Hamza infiltrates a criminal gang in Karachi that is supplying weapons to Pakistan government-sponsored terrorist groups.
Hamza’s deployment by the Indian intelligence chief modelled on Ajit Doval is the direct result of the hijacking of IC-184. Hamza’s intel on the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai go unheeded. Part two, which will come out in 2026, is expected to show Hamza’s fiery payback.
A crucial factor behind Dhurandhar’s popularity, apart from its pulsating retro-contemporary soundtrack, is its claim to authenticity. The film blurs the line between facts and imagination, especially with regard to its Pakistani characters.
Dhurandhar include news footage of terror strikes as well as recordings of conversations between the terrorists behind the Mumbai attack and their Pakistani handlers. The film claims to give a documentary-style ringside view of real events, even as it plays out exactly like every other potboiler about undercover agents.
In Uri: The Surgical Strike, another character modelled on Ajit Doval tells the prime minister that enough is enough. Ghar mein ghuskar marenge – we will hit the Pakistanis in their homes, where it hurts the most.
“Ghar mein ghuskar maarenge” is a throwaway line in Yash Chopra’s Deewar (1975), written by Salim-Javed. What is this I hear, the dapper smuggler Davar asks the dock worker Vijay. You thrashed my rival Samant in his backyard – ghar mein ghuskar maara?
The line resurfaced in many crime dramas and was then weaponised by terrorism-themed films about Pakistan, most notably in Neeraj Pandey’s Baby (2015). The idea of taking the enemy unawares by being more agile, aggressive and unscrupulous than them – the Mossad way – has inspired several spy thrillers, of which Dhurandhar is a prime example.
The rage-contorted, blood-streaked faces in Chhaava and Dhurandhar gave new meaning to the Angry Young Man archetype popularised by Salim-Javed. But New India’s hero fulminates on behalf of the prevailing social and political order, rather than against it.
He’s a brutish fan, not a disgruntled sceptic. He comes at viewers with the force of a sledgehammer, and they welcome his virility and brutality with pride and relief – here, finally, is someone doing what should have been done a long time ago.
The incensed hero who displayed traits associated with villainy turned up beyond the sarkari film too. Aanand L Rai’s Tere Ishk Mein stars Dhanush as Shankar, a working-class student leader who lays eyes on Kriti Sanon’s wealthy heroine Mukti and decides that she belongs to him.
It does not matter what Mukti believes. Shankar inserts himself into her life at every available opportunity. After cremating his father, Shankar lands up at Mukti’s engagement with a bottle containing the Ganga’s waters, which he proceeds to splash on Mukti’s terrified visage.
In a country in which acid attacks are scarily common – and where gangajal is a euphemism for the skin-destroying liquid – this scene would have featured the antagonist.
Of course, Mukti actually loves Shankar. She is unable to resist his warped passion. Billed as an “intense love story”, Tere Ishk Mein is infected with the same air of grimness that hung over 2025, like smog.
Even a classic film – again scripted by Salim-Javed – caught the take-no-prisoners bug. Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay was re-released in December, with improved visuals and its original ending reinstated.
Indian censors in 1975 didn’t allow Sholay to end the way its creators had planned: the armless Baldev Singh crushes his tormentor Gabbar Singh to death with specially designed shoes.
Might the censors have also balked at the sheer implausibility of a limbless, elderly man flying through the air like a horizontal rocket and getting the better of the younger, fitter Gabbar Singh?
Whatever be the case, Sholay – The Final Cut will now be seen as the movie’s definitive version. The latest release marked Sholay’s 50th anniversary. Its re-emergence in a year marked by fury and vendetta was weirdly perfectly timed.
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