The sequel to Aditya Dhar’s 2025 action/spy thriller blockbuster Dhurandhar, titled Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge, has landed on Netflix, just a few months after it blew past North American Bollywood box office records. So now we must ask: is the almost four hour epic starring Ranveer Singh worth streaming?
The Gist: Picking up where the runaway hit Dhurandhar (also streaming on Netflix) left off, Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge begins by filling in Indian-operative in Pakistan “Hamza Ali Mazari”’s (Ranveer Singh) past as Jaskirat Singh Rangi, an Indian military dropout who sought a violent revenge after his family is attacked during a land dispute. The film flashes back to the timeline of the first movie, where Mazari has risen the ranks to become the King of Lyari, the small town outside of Karachi where his undercover operation is centered. But Mazari’s rise is met with skepticism, and soon he’s fighting for both the covert plan he was executing on behalf of the Indian government and his own survival.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Dhar’s first film Uri: The Surgical Strike centers on similar India-Pakistan tensions, though that one is based on true events.
Performance Worth Watching: Arjun Rampal steps into the big shoes left by Akshaye Khanna’s big bad from the first Dhurandhar, and he eases into the same strain of menace he perfected in Om Shanti Om.
Sex And Skin: There’s no skin in that sense of the phrase but there is a ton of skin being blasted off, if that’s your thing.
Our Take: The Dhurandhar film series joins a long line of Bollywood films (which are produced in Mumbai, India) that stoke the fires of discontent between sibling countries India and Pakistan. Now divided along religious lines after the 1947 Partition, much of India’s film output paints Pakistan as a land of terrorists. As Dhurandhar and its sequel does, India often points to real terrorist attacks in the country (like the 26/11 Mumbai bombing, or the 2016 Uri attack) to justify this, which are valid as one-off stories but become difficult to defend when extrapolated to broader anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistani sentiments.
Aside from the blatant propaganda, there are a lot of missed opportunities to take this film beyond its gory center. Introducing Jaskirat’s origin story and personal relationships suggests a level of depth that Dhar ultimately isn’t willing to fully commit to. The fate of Jaskirat’s childhood friend and only ally in Lyari are barely lingered on before the film returns to violence and scheming; nevermind exploring the actually interesting idea that such a proud Indian nationalist would willingly marry and have a child with a well-connected Pakistani woman. Without an emotional core that goes beyond surface-level nationalistic motivations, Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge fails to explore the actual ideas at the center of its narrative.
Our Call: SKIP IT. At almost four hours, Dhar’s Dhurandhar sequel is bloated and gratuitously violent, and egregiously careless in its rampant nationalist propaganda.
Radhika Menon (@menonrad) is a film and TV writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Vulture, Teen Vogue, ELLE, and more. She is the co-host of the podcast PromRad with fellow Decider contributor Proma Khosla. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.
