The only subtle thing about Aditya Dhar’s follow-up to his monster hit Dhurandhar (2025) is its title. Dhurandhar: The Revenge doesn’t quite capture what Dhar sets out to do. In a movie seething with demonic rage and torture porn, “The Revenge” turns out to be a colossal understatement.
Ranveer Singh returns as the long-haired, wide-chested and ample-bottomed Indian undercover agent Hamza, who’s managed to pass off as a Balochi in Karachi, kill the gangster Rehman Dakait (Akshaye Khanna) and marry Yaleena (Sara Arjun), the daughter of the weaselly politician Jameel (Rakesh Bedi). Hamza is now both family man and the lord of Lyari, Rehman’s headquarters in Karachi.
Hamza is actually Jaskirat, a Sikh from Pathankot who slaughters the people who had wronged his family. Although Jaskirat hasn’t yet joined the Indian Army as he would have liked to, there is an unexplained military precision to the way in which he scalps his adversaries.
He’s already ready for the covert operation that intelligence chief Ajay Sanyal (R Madhavan) has in mind. Ajay moulds Jaskirat into a weapon of destruction that will gut Pakistan from within.
Hamza’s mission is to smash the nexus between the Karachi gangs, the Pakistani spy agency ISI and terrorists. Having worked his way into the inner circle of ISI agent Iqbal (Arjun Rampal), Hamza is halfway there.
The movie is building up to a fire-and-brimstone retribution for Pakistan-sponsored terrorist strikes on India, especially the IC-814 hijack in 1999 and the 2008 attack on Mumbai, and its alleged patronage of the fugitive criminal Dawood Ibrahim. Hamza is the “dhurandhar” – the genius who will apply mind and muscle to meting out medieval-era barbarism.
It’s surprising that Hamza doesn’t get there sooner, given the dim-witted Pakistanis he meets. Rehman’s cousin Uzair (Danish Pandor), Major Iqbal, Rehman’s Lyari rival Arshad (Ashwin Dhar), Pakistani police officer Chaudhary Aslam (Sanjay Dutt), who helps Hamza kill Rehman – none of them divines Hamza’s grand plan. By the time Aslam’s tubelight comes on, it’s too late for the supposedly lethal cop.
No matter. Aslam is a Pakistani, fit only to die horribly in the movie’s scheme of things. Dhar’s screenplay, with contributions from Ojas Gautam and the film’s editor Shivkumar V Panicker, treats Pakistan as a rogue state under the sway of spooks and terrorists that’s ripe for annihilation.
The violence has a gladiatorial quality, with scenes designed to sate the bloodlust of viewers who have been awaiting an Israel-style sneak assault on its historic enemy. “Now India will decide Pakistan’s destiny” is one of the many lines that display contempt for India’s neighbour.
Stripped off its anti-Pakistan hatred and Indian Muslim-baiting moments, Dhurandhar was a regular gangster drama with thrilling action set pieces and catchy music by Shashwat Sachdev that included cleverly placed retro tunes. Portions of the predecessor played out like a succession war in the Mumbai underworld or the Uttar Pradesh badlands.
However, there was never any mistaking the film’s agenda, which emerges in its entirety in the sequel. Dhurandhar: The Revenge is Marco or K.G.F: Chapter 2, but with malice that meshes seamlessly with pro-government propaganda.
This is hardly the first time that Bollywood has portrayed an Indian spy going undercover in Pakistan, enacting fantasies of vengeance achieved at a great personal cost. The long list of such films and shows includes D-Day (2013), Raazi (2018), Romeo Akbar Walter (2019), Mission Majnu (2023), Salakaar and Saare Jahan Se Accha (both 2025).
All of them claim Mossad-level success in infiltrating Pakistan’s security establishment. All of them are nationalistic, but in a generic way.
None of them is as viscerally violent or needlingly provocative as Dhurandhar. And none of their filmmakers champions the Narendra Modi government, or parrots the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ideological stance, as forcefully as does Aditya Dhar.
Hamza’s tips lead directly to demonetisation, which the film says was necessary to prevent the ISI and Dawood Ibrahim from flooding India with counterfeit currency. Pakistan’s point man in Uttar Pradesh is a Muslim politician. Dawood (Danish Iqbal) is all but finished, the movie claims.
There’s praise for the “tea seller” who taught Pakistan a lesson; a mention of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. The movie also drags the Khalistani movement into its crosshairs. Khalistani activists turn up in Karachi, eager to receive arms and money from Major Iqbal.
Although belonging to the sarkari cinema subset that includes The Kashmir Files, The Kerala Story and Bastar: The Naxal Story, Dhurandhar has filmmaking chops that are missing in its peers. Dhar’s skill with handling a sprawling cast, staging slick action set pieces and packaging carnage as cool was evident in Dhurandhar and is scaled up massively in the sequel. The director of Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) knows just how to apply pressure to an open wound and make the resulting pain feel pleasurable.
At 229 minutes – 19 minutes longer than the previous production – the vendetta saga is overstretched, garbled in places, and vastly more indulgent, resembling a web series rather than a movie. Dhar slaps songs onto every other scene instead of rationing them out. Boney M’s Rasputin and Tirchi Topewala from Tridev are among the older tunes repurposed to make a tedious killing spree appear seductive.
There are no more restraints on you, the chain-smoking Ajay tells Hamza. With Hamza having already massacred most of his targets, the line is an unintended joke.
Sanjay Dutt and Rakesh Bedi supply the few moments of actually intended humour, Bedi particularly entertaining as the buffoonish Jameel. Ranveer Singh, who has more to work with this time, embodies the film’s grim and relentless tone.
A robotic Rambo in the previous production, Singh transforms into a human chainsaw, ripping though his enemies with zeal and something resembling joy. Hamza is foolish enough to maintain an easily located diary that details his operation, but is always up for blood-letting.
Portrayed as omnipresent and omnipotent, Singh’s Hamza/Jaskirat is supposed to stand in for every Indian who seeks a fitting response to Pakistan’s continued support for terrorist attacks. Anybody who disagrees with the muscular “Naya Bharat” rhetoric is from the Pakistan-funded Indian corner, which ranges from non-governmental organisations to Naxals, according to Dhurandhar: The Revenge.
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