Dhurandhar The Revenge – Review

quick review:

What I disliked in Dhurandhar, I disliked even more in this one. None of what I liked was carried forward here. And the propaganda that was subtle and annoying, is now blatant and amusing.

Streaming Partner: JioHotstar

Review

The success of an action film is to wow you with its choreographed moves. That of a violent film is to get you to gasp with every act of brutality. That of a film attempting to make a political statement is to engage you with its argument. Dhurandhar The Revenge has a handful sequences that feel creative. It has so much barbaric chopping and smashing of body parts that you grow immune to the savagery—I was able to stay completely relaxed and take deep breaths in the last sequence, which is quite gory in absolute terms. Last but hardly the least, Dhurandhar’s idea of being political is to plaster one politician’s face across the screen often enough for it to stay one of the lasting memories of the film. Not the Indian government, not a political party, one person.

This last bit is done to glamourise some of the most known political actions such as the impact of demonetisation. It is repeated often enough that it is outright funny—the impact has to be shown through a fictional movie rather than news channels which are supposed to report facts. It has to be shoved down through fantasy, 10 years later.

Now, once we accept that this is a fairytale, even if a gory one, we can take in stride a lot of what is going on. Like tens of terrorists being shot within 15-20 minutes of run time and maybe a week or two in the story? This is even more ridiculous considering the movie is well over 3.5 hours! Less than 10% of run-time on such an important part of the story?

The pacing of the film generally to isn’t anywhere close to that of the first installment of Dhurandhar. That one was a thoroughly engaging watch even if you weren’t enjoying what you saw. The writing here doesn’t have the agenda of telling you a good story, let alone telling it well.
That Ranveer Singh still manages to put his heart, soul and more to this performance feels like more credit to him than the director. The rest of the cast exists to make the violence and propaganda possible.

Sometimes it is arduous to write about movies that I haven’t enjoyed watching. This one doubly so, because I have already spent 3.5 hours plus about 40 minutes of advertisements on it. Especially, when the end product in mind isn’t a good film, but a political rally, one that I hadn’t signed up to attend.

– meeta, a part of the audience

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