Mahanth is Editor

Throughout my childhood and adulthood, I have periodically watched Indian movies in various languages: Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam, etc. A vast majority of it was honestly not very good. On occasion I came across high-quality film fare in terms of drama, history, song and dance, or action like the amazing RRR reviewed here. But to date the Indian film industry, as storied and glorious as it could be, seemed incapable of producing a world-class bad-ass international spy thriller movie, something I eagerly yearned for as an Indian-American over decades.

Not for lack of trying. Many big-budget Indian James Bond or Mission Impossible type knockoffs with A-list Bollywood stars flooded the zone, mostly centered on cat and mouse games between India and Pakistan. Mediocre movies at best. None made the cut: not Agent Vinod, not the Tiger films, and not Romeo Akbar Walter where predictable twists among poor scripts were core features.

That is until Dhurandhar (December 2025) and its sequel, Dhurandar: The Revenge (March 2026) arrived on the scene in unexpectedly (for me) explosive fashion. The global buzz was intense- and ultimately justified despite the long run-times, cringe-worthy jingoism and gratuitous violence. This duology was shot all in one go and released in installments with a brief gap in between to heighten the fever, with interesting premises based (very) loosely on true events. Director Aditya Dhar and and team produced nothing short of an absolute masterpiece. Even better for me personally, I saw the first installment while I was in India itself in January with Sushanth and Nivedh Pai. Then in April 2026 I witnessed the second part in the movie theater, the best possible method to experience it, all the way back home in Wisconsin. Lastly during my life I had the pleasure of visiting Karachi in Pakistan, the setting for a majority of the film, as a guest in 2012. That makes me one of the few in the entire Indian global diaspora who have seen the film and also the gritty city behind the story.

What makes this action-packed undercover India/Pakistan blood feud flick dramatically superior to other Bollywood versions that came before it, loosely along similar storylines? In a word, humanity. The humanity of plot developments, unfolding stories, characters, moral questions, love and revenge. Nations are not monoliths of the same kind of citizens. Common people in Pakistan and India are not so black and white, or such obvious villains and heroes in real life; they deserve to be portrayed with such complexity as Dhurandhar does. Too many Indian movies in the past served to dehumanize Pakistani gangsters or terrorists- a sin Hollywood too has been guilty of all too often within the genre. Instead the duology portrays with constant suspense many protagonists and antagonists alike in India and Pakistan, inside a complex web beyond the Indo/Pak border or Hindu-Muslim rivalry to include constantly shifting tribalistic (and tribal) alliances between and within Balochis, Sikhs, police and spy agencies, street gangs and political parties. This rich tapestry at least feels quite real, for our world is a messy and violent place hard to properly pay homage to within a few hours.

Similarly we live in a complex tangle of executive decision-making without the perfect moral clarity we may wish for, calling into question what is patriotic and unpatriotic, corrupt or clean. Decisions are hard, and if they were not so terrorism and organized crime could be controlled by the good guys with less trouble. The consequences of decisions are uncertain and the odds of failure and danger are ever-present. Carefully laying it out, even with at times excessive patriotic overtones binding the story together, is exactly what Indian spy cinema had been lacking for decades. Till now.

The final icing on the cake is some of the most delicious action violence sequences you will find anywhere in the modern world from end to end, scene after scene. Special kudos must also go to the spectacular acting, with Ranvir Singh in the lead undercover role of the namesake Dhurandar (“stalwart”) and Akshay Khanna, Sanjay Dutt, Madhavan, Arjun Rampal, and others in some career-worthy supporting performances.

This is Bollywood at its finest, and beyond. The Dhurandar duology will be hard for India to top for potentially years to come. That’s how good it is.