{"id":547661,"date":"2026-03-19T22:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T22:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/547661\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T22:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T22:19:09","slug":"audiences-brace-for-arguments-as-sequel-to-divisive-bollywood-spy-thriller-hits-theaters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/547661\/","title":{"rendered":"Audiences brace for arguments as sequel to divisive Bollywood spy thriller hits theaters"},"content":{"rendered":"

A divisive Bollywood thriller about an Indian spy working undercover in Pakistan<\/a> has captivated audiences in the rival South Asian nations for months, drawing viewers worldwide and becoming the highest-grossing Hindi-language film ever in both India and North America. Now audiences are bracing for the sequel.<\/p>\n

\u201cDhurandhar,\u201d which translates to \u201cStalwart,\u201d became India\u2019s highest-grossing film last year after its release in December. It then topped the Netflix chart for non-English films after its Jan. 30 release on the platform \u2014 including in Pakistan, where officials criticized it as Indian propaganda and the film was publicly banned.<\/p>\n

The second installment of the two-part film, \u201cDhurandhar: The Revenge\u201d arrives Thursday in theaters, including in the United States, with millions of dollars in presales in India.<\/p>\n

Directed by Aditya Dhar, the \u201cDhurandhar\u201d films come amid heightened tensions between Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, nuclear-armed neighbors that fought their worst conflict in decades<\/a> over four days last May. It is the latest in a series of box-office hits with overt nationalist messaging since India\u2019s Hindu nationalist leader, Narendra Modi<\/a>, took office in 2014, including \u201cThe Kashmir Files\u201d and \u201cThe Kerala Story\u201d as well as Dhar\u2019s previous films \u201cUri: The Surgical Strike\u201d and \u201cArticle 370.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cDhurandhar,\u201d which runs more than 3 1\/2 hours, Bollywood star Ranveer Singh plays Hamza Ali Mazari, an Indian operative on a dangerous mission in Karachi, a Pakistani port city that is the capital of Sindh province. Audiences have praised the film\u2019s star-studded cast, heart-pounding action scenes, and catchy soundtrack, but Pakistani authorities say its depiction of gang violence is unfair to Karachi\u2019s working-class neighborhood of Lyari. <\/p>\n

After the film\u2019s release in December, the Sindh government said it was backing what has been described as a rebuttal film to \u201cDhurandhar,\u201d which it called \u201cIndian propaganda.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cLyari stands for culture, peace, and resilience \u2014 not violence,\u201d it said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Despite being banned in Pakistan, \u201cDhurandhar\u201d has reportedly been widely pirated there. The film is so popular that lawmaker Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was seen entering an event to one of the film\u2019s trending songs in a video that went viral.<\/p>\n

\"AA promotional poster for \u201cDhurandhar.\u201dJyoti<\/p>\n

\u201cDhurandhar\u201d has also been criticized over the way it blends cinema with real-life events such as the terrorist attacks on India\u2019s Parliament in 2001 and on the city of Mumbai in 2008. In the opening scene, which references the 1999 hijacking of an Indian passenger plane by Pakistani terrorists, fictional Indian intelligence chief Ajay Sanyal \u2014 believed to be modeled after Ajit Doval, Modi\u2019s national security adviser and the lead negotiator in the 1999 hijacking \u2014 decides to send Hamza on his mission as retribution. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a story is inspired by real events and complex geopolitical realities, intent and responsibility must go hand in hand with cinematic ambition,\u201d said Jyoti Deshpande, president of Mumbai-based Jio Studios and one of the producers of \u201cDhurandhar.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cOur approach was to present a more nuanced take on patriotism while at the same time remaining highly engaging through immersive storytelling that allowed viewers, regardless of geography, to be invested in the narrative,\u201d Deshpande said in emailed comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cDhurandhar\u201d has also found a large Netflix audience in a number of Arab countries despite being banned by all six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, over its perceived anti-Pakistan messaging.<\/p>\n

\u201cAudiences didn\u2019t just watch it, they interacted with it, debated it, and made it their own,\u201d Deshpande said. \u201cThat is what sustained momentum two months in.\u201d<\/p>\n

At times, the debate around the film has gotten ugly, leading the Film Critics Guild of India to condemn \u201ctargeted attacks\u201d on professional film critics. <\/p>\n

Almost as soon as \u201cDhurandhar\u201d was released, the online conversation around it shifted from the film itself to \u201can uncivil battle of ideologies,\u201d said Sucharita Tyagi, an Indian movie critic who was harassed over her review.<\/p>\n

Some commenters took issue with Tyagi\u2019s description of the film as propaganda, saying it minimized the emotional impact of what they considered a forceful tribute to Indians\u2019 sacrifices in the name of national security. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo see how many people refused to engage with a point of view that was not aligned with theirs was illuminating,\u201d she said in a Zoom interview. \u201cIt got so overwhelming that on Instagram and YouTube, I had to turn off the comments. And I\u2019ve never had to do that before.\u201d <\/p>\n

Tyagi said nationalist films such as \u201cDhurandhar\u201d risk encouraging a charged form of patriotism that deepens the hostility between India and Pakistan. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue is when you incite an audience, and instead of propagating a message of humanity, you\u2019re propagating the anger in a populace that\u2019s already angry,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo one should watch a film and leave it that kind of angry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A divisive Bollywood thriller about an Indian spy working undercover in Pakistan has captivated audiences in the rival…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-547661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}