Why Dhurandhar Worked

Because it tried to be real. 

The operating word there being tried.

Now, don't get me wrong, I do think Dhurandhar was about as real as Bollywood allowed it to be, but that in and of itself was a big leap. See, while Hollywood and the likes have had 'realistic' spy flicks that attempted to depict spycraft as...an actual craft, Bollywood made the active choice to remain unserious and entertaining.

I used the words 'active choice' because that's exactly what it was and still is, a money move made to get the quick bucks. The Indian audience is, in the mind of corporate film overlords, simple-minded creatures who don't crave for depth. Give them a two-hour-long melodrama with a few superstars, and the seats are booked the moment the trailer is released. While the outside world had their Bond's and Bourne's and Hunt's, we had flicks that refused to actually be anything other than a serial B-plot or worse, propaganda (something Dhurandhar also isn't subtle with). 

But the reason why Dhurandhar became such a huge topic of conversation is not that surprising. Besides the obvious PR marketing in which I think I saw Akshaye Khanna more times than my own face in the span of a week, it happens to be a very tightly-packed, interesting action movie. Which all a spy film is really supposed to be. Well-written and well-choreographed. Sleek and stealthy. Acting is not the most demanding thing to be expected of your film. For all its faults: the dog whistles, the creative liberties with casting, the romantic sub-plot, and an entire sequence that I will be talking about later on, the film is made with an intent. There is an actual story to be told here besides RAW agent good, evil guy (usually an ISI agent), evil, and the random hot lady who dies or is also a love interest/agent. 

The movie also does itself and its main character, Hamza (the spy, Ranveer Singh), a huge favor by not centering the plot wholly around him. He moves things along occasionally but his role is simply to observe and report. He's just an informant and doesn't take up a lot of space in the overall story unless he absolutely has to. Which is obvious spywork and a low bar for an action movie but when movies like WAR and its descendants exist, even the basics go a long way. It would be remiss of me to not mention the odd casting gap here, because while the writers understood what the story needed to be, the casting director was asleep in a hammock because why would you cast Ranveer Singh, a jacked, hairy, immensely recognizable man, to be your undercover agent? This is where suspension of disbelief and the previously mentioned Bollywood overlords once again come into play. You need a star to make a blockbuster, so just like how Sean Connery was not a subtle Bond, Ranveer Singh was not a subtle Hamza, but it's not the worst casting; it's just very comical. 

But I'd argue the main reason Dhurandhar worked is the same reason many films in the same vein often do: it's a male fantasy. 

The whole thing is a story of an Indian man who gets revenge on the national enemy, Pakistan, by infiltrating a gang and gaining their trust to give back intel to the Indian government. That in and of itself would naturally gain the respect of a lot of the male Indian audience and their patriotic sensibilities. Which makes it okay that he romances a 19-year-old Sara Arjun (who plays the love interest) while Ranveer Singh himself is 40 years old. A lot of people on the internet argued that it was 'realism' and he was supposed to 'honeypot' her. To which I say, if you cast a 20-something actress and made her 19 in the movie, that would be okay too. After all, Bollywood has never shied away from casting men for roles that way beyond their 'age limit'. It romanticizes a predatory age gap, glamorizes violence from most of the male characters, even the villain, who conveniently was later trending on reels for being a badass. 

The movie overall has a strange relationship with women. The female love interest is shown to be an aspiring medical student, who does not actually want to study medicine but wants to be free from her home and falls for a man who works in a gang. She has no other purpose. The villain's wife, whose relationship was also romanticized, does not have a single line of dialogue in the whole movie. People will once again say, 'The movie is about a RAW agent, not women.' But the movie itself had no problem showing the main character's mother as a way to empathize with his grief over being an Indian in Pakistan. Women are in the movie, but simply as tools to be used to humanize the men and nothing more. They are accessories for item numbers and status. 

It's sad to say, but if the movie has enough action scenes (which has now become a 'who can create a more violent and gore-filled scene for the sake of realism' challenge), 'aurafarming scenes', and a mix of both together, the crowd will eat it up. There was a scene in the early parts of the film, because it does in fact have a three-and-a-half-hour runtime, where Ranveer Singh gets sexually assaulted by a few Pakistanis. And this is when he has just recently entered the country. And it's a very important yet minute detail that isn't hyperfocused but I didn't even think of it until it happened. The smaller moments like that address real issues that would've been faced by a spy or any man at that time in that place, which is what makes the story feel more authentic and interesting. Male assault is not often talked about, much less portrayed on film as a real thing and not a sexist gag. Hamza's desensitization, his bond with what is essentially the enemy, his real-fake romantic relationship, his guilt regarding not doing enough, and his Indianness are all things that weren't explored as subtly or, in some cases, at all. 

Don't get me wrong, I liked the movie fine enough because it was entertaining, but it's also set up to succeed because it's all the 'masculine men' ideologies packed into a film. Like a lot of big Bollywood spy/war blockbusters, it perpetuates several rigid and subtle thoughts about masculinity while passing as a nationalist film. Real spies aren't jacked, conventionally attractive dudes who romance pretty girls and kill Pakistani political figures. But there comes the fantasy. The James Bond of it all, sold in true film-y style with a hero who protects and serves and is flawed, but since he works for the government, he can do no wrong. It's not like there is nuance and ethics in spycraft, no, this spy is better than this spy because this spy is one of ours. 

Because at the end of the day, these films are mostly made as propaganda for the government, whichever one may be currently ruling at that time. And Dhurandhar, at several points, makes it very clear that it is very pro the current government and anti the previous one. And I mean very clear. The movie also made a choice to air the real voice recordings from the 26/11 attack in Mumbai on a bright red screen for a good 2-3 minutes, a choice I think was poor both artistically and generally. To use actual footage from an event that did not need to be used, especially because the Mumbai event in the movie was already alluded to, and we got Hamza's horrific reaction while it happened, was very unnecessary and a bad interpretation of the term 'show, don't tell'. It also felt like a cheap and easy way to get the audience's support without actually doing the work yourself. Rather than convey the awful terror attack using your own creative lens, the director chose to show voicecalls from the actual hotel. In a movie that dramatized every other real event, it is interesting that this section is the only one pulled directly from the archives. 

The movie has a talented cast, a great soundtrack and good writing. But don't let a good movie make you forget that art is political and exists in the context of everything the artist wants it to be. Because it's not just a movie, it's never just a movie. And it is that deep. 

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