Dhurandhar movie review: Overwhelmed by length, not Lyari!

Director Aditya DharActors Ranveer Singh Akshaye KhannaRating 2 starsAditya Dharrsquos directed Dhurandhar The latter is supposedly an operation by Indian intelligence thatrsquos literally a oneman mission set in the Lyari neighbourhood of Karachi PakistanThe former debuted with Uri 2019 a pure actioner posing as the untold classified story of Indian Armyrsquos retaliation to the terrorist attack on a brigade headquarters in Jammu amp Kashmir 2016Itrsquod appear Dharrsquos core competence lies in some sorta super serious access to state agencies that supply him unlimited info on events mdash seemingly unknown to politicians bureaucrats think tanks journalists combined mdash to script stories behind Indiarsquos biggest undercover moves suitably chapterisedSuch was the case with Uri shot in Serbia As with Article 370 writtenproduced by Dhar Likewise DhurandharWhich though opens with immense promise for one of the most powerful underworld dramas witnessed in Hindi movies for the longestTreat this foremost as lsquoSatya of Karachirsquo if you may veering toward Sarkar on occasion exhilaratingly dealing with empowered dons of another maximum city right across the Arabian Sea from MumbaiAs it is those whorsquove been to Mumbai and Karachi find enough similarities between both including its 1990s like chaotic underworld Mutthahida Quami Movement MQM its messy links with politicians Pakistan Peoplersquos Party PPP their ganglords getting elevated in organised crime and hitmen roaming the streets equally dodging lsquoencounter specialistsrsquoFor a book recco consider Anatol Lievenrsquos Pakistan A Hard Country 2011To be fair Satya was written directed by filmmakers who were themselves new to MumbaiFairer still to suggest Dhurandhar has been performed written directed by those who havenrsquot ever stepped a foot in Karachi and perhaps never willSo never mind this dustbowl for a city that by and large seems wholly bereft of a single modern building and looks mostly bombedout between multiple ghettosBut thatrsquos roughly how the West shows the brown Third World in actioners with a certain sepia tone check Extraction set in Dhaka Bangladesh Clicheacutes like Roohafza for prop or Ghulam Ali for background music is all about that yoursquoll get to seep into the setting Karachi cornyZero in on the key characters instead Theyrsquore indeed based on wellknown blokes of the Lyari underworld Top result on Google should show you that And thatrsquos what first got me hugely engaging with this dramaThat is matching reallife men to this mob opera Whether that be the famously shifty Karachi cop known for extrajudicial killings lsquoChaudhary Aslam Khanrsquo Sanjay DuttOr the cousin in the crime syndicate lsquoUzbair Balochrsquo who will eventually rise up the ranks to rule Indeed even the MQM politician ie the adorable comedian Rakesh Bedi looking more like Tikku Talsania whorsquos the Bhautype fella from SatyaBut more so you canrsquot take your eyes off Rahman Dakait As in Akshaye Khanna the lean mean machine letting his quiet laconic expressions as usual steal the damn show Hersquos making a happy habit of bringing gravitas to mania on the mainstream screenTake him as Aurangzeb in Chhaava 2025 Take him out of it The whole movie is simply a bunch of warriors screeching their lungs outWatch him here even as he suddenly shrieks on the mic in the brilliantly executed massrally sequence where Rahman Dakait is publicly endorsed by PPP You just wanna watch him more and moreWith just enough subtlety and some confidence in the written material Dhurandhar had the makings of a sufficiently desi GodfatherBut this isnrsquot an underworld drama Those guys Irsquom referring to appear more like contextless villains in a completely bloodandgore orgy to do with an Indian hero whorsquos infiltrated the Baloch mobThis hero lands without any personal backstory whatsoever except that hersquos been planted by the top Intelligence Bureau mandarin the wonderfully cast R Madhavan as an Ajit Doval like figure and personally approved by the Indian Prime MinisterThatrsquos the longhaired heavyhitter Ranveer Singh as Rambo more like El MariachiAntonio Banderas in a curry western causing mayhem as he goes along surrounded by Kalashnikovs twodoor Datsuns dragging blokes through the streets breaking knuckles killing men by the minutehellipThis Indian dude is a desperado not very different from any other spy of the James Bond mould where the stakes are phenomenally high and the man in service of the state will win allIf this looks like some kinda jingoist propaganda well all spy thrillers by their very naturegenre are Thatrsquos not the issue if it ever wasThe issue is if yoursquore more interested in the villains than the hero of the bloody piece as hersquos gaslighting a 19yearold girl while apparently in love with herAnd that he sits in a room with everyone from the local mafia to the ISI handholding 2611 attackers from live TV in KarachiThe screen turns red You hear the actual recorded conversations between these handlers and terrorists from Hotel TajThe next scene is Ranveer as Hamza with a dialogue about Ghayal and Ghatak as if reprising Sunny Deol Tigertype spy universes make no claim to documentary truths You see them for what they areItrsquos hard when to take this film seriously and how to let it simply go mdash as characters turn into caricatures and morning slip into late afternoon with Dhurandhar going on for way over three and half hours And itrsquos still to be continued when it finally endsAs it is Irsquove lost count of the number of films with a lone Indian spy in the midst of Pak establishment latelySome at best hit the board but miss the mark say Saare Jahan Se Accha 2025 Netflix series that this film shouldrsquove been At least one Raazi 2018 pierced the bullrsquos eyeThis onersquos eyeing footfalls like Pushpa 2 Look at the kinda money theyrsquove spent on making it But I wouldrsquove spent the exact same amount of money watching something less muddled more sorted too no