Dhurandhar: The Revenge

• 1. Introduction

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  Dhurandhar: The Revenge, a 2026 Hindi-language spy thriller written and directed by Aditya Dhar, earned ₹75 crore before its official opening day had even begun. Paid preview shows on the evening of the 18th of March 2026 broke an Indian record held by Stree 2 and They Call Him OG. The film then ran for 229 minutes, which places it among the longest Indian films ever produced. It is a sequel to the 2025 film Dhurandhar, and it closes a two-film story. At its center is an undercover Indian intelligence agent working his way into Karachi's criminal syndicates and Pakistani politics. Critics could not agree on what they had watched. Some saw a gripping, star-powered thriller, and others saw something closer to propaganda. Who is this agent, and how did a production this large come together? Where does invention end and recorded history begin, and what did audiences make of it all?

• 2. The Spy's Road

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  In 2000, a young man named Jaskirat Singh Rangi leaves his hometown of Pathankot to undergo military training. While he is away, a violent land dispute involving a local MLA, Sukhwinder Singh, destroys his family. His father is hanged, his elder sister is murdered, and his younger sister Jasleen is abducted. Jaskirat returns with weapons bought from Atif Ahmed, a mafia don and political leader based in Uttar Pradesh. With help from his friend Gurbaaz, he kills Sukhwinder and the rest of the gang and rescues Jasleen. He is arrested, tried and sentenced to death. Before prison, he entrusts Jasleen's future to Gurbaaz.

  In 2002, intelligence officials Ajay Sanyal and Sushant Bansal arrange for Jaskirat to be abducted during a prison transfer. By 2004, he has been recruited into a covert programme meant to infiltrate Pakistani terror networks. He becomes Hamza Ali Mazari and travels through Kabul to the Karachi district of Lyari. There he cuts every tie to his past and answers to a handler named Mohammed Aalam.

  By 2009, Rehman Dakait has died in Lyari, and Hamza sees his chance. He manipulates local factions into a war between the Baloch and Pathan gangs. The Pathan leader Arshad Pappu is killed, and Rehman's cousin Uzair Baloch is arrested. Hamza's influence in Karachi grows, and he enters the inner circle of Dawood Ibrahim, known as Bade Sahab. Dawood tasks him with facilitating narcotics operations to fund military operations.

  A group of Punjabi rebels is brought in to help, and Hamza does not know that Gurbaaz is among them. At a party in Hamza's house, a drunken Gurbaaz threatens to expose him. A fight follows, and Gurbaaz dies. Aalam arrives to cover up the death, but guests discover him, and Hamza executes him in front of them all.

  Suspicion now gathers around Hamza. SP Chaudhary Aslam begins to investigate him, and dies in a suicide attack that Hamza orchestrates through the Balochistan United Force, or BUF. Hamza's wife Yalina learns who he really is. She agrees to stay silent, for the sake of their son Zayan and because she understands his reasons.

  At a secret meeting in Dubai, Sanyal gives Hamza the freedom to dismantle what remains of the terror network. This begins Operation Green Leaf. Hamza assassinates several key figures, including the terror financier Javed Khanani and Zahoor Mistry, one of the hijackers of IC 814. Sanyal watches Mistry's death on a video call. Meanwhile, unknown gunmen assassinate the imprisoned Atif Ahmed as he travels for a medical check, which shocks Major Iqbal. Aslam's second-in-command, Omar, extorts Yalina after holding Zayan at gunpoint, and he passes Hamza's secret to Iqbal.

  When Dawood plans an attack on India, Hamza travels to Iqbal's madrassa in Muridke to deliver weapons. Iqbal confronts him as an Indian spy and stabs him. But Hamza and the BUF have planted a bomb in the weapons crates, and it kills multiple militants. A firefight follows between Iqbal's Mujahideen and BUF fighters disguised as Pakistan Rangers. Hamza destroys Iqbal's transport with an RPG, has the BUF level the madrassa, and chases Iqbal to a shipping yard. There Hamza kills him in the explosion of a kerosene tanker.

  After a last phone call with Yalina, Hamza is captured and tortured by Omar. Sanyal secures his release by blackmailing Shamshad Hassan, the head of Pakistani intelligence, with evidence of dealings with Israeli intelligence. Hamza suggests that Uzair be framed as India's spy, so the blame lands elsewhere. His father-in-law, Jameel Jamali, then collects him. Jameel turns out to be a longtime Indian asset who has been slowly poisoning Dawood from inside his network.

  With his mission complete, Hamza drops his alias and leaves Yalina and Zayan behind for their safety. He returns to India as Jaskirat Singh Rangi. Though praised for his service, he vanishes before his formal debriefing and goes to his childhood home, which he gazes at from a distance. A mid-credits scene shows flashbacks of his training with the Research and Analysis Wing. The post-credits scene shows Shamshad ordering Omar into a mental asylum, after Omar threatens to tell the National Assembly about Hamza's release.

• 3. One Shoot, Two Films

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  Aditya Dhar did not set out to make two films. The project began as a single picture, and the filmmakers chose a two-part release only during post-production. The reasons were the sheer volume of footage and the complexity of the story. Both parts were shot concurrently as one production, which is why the sequel carries so many returning faces.

  Cameras began rolling in Bangkok, Thailand, in July 2024. Principal photography ended in October 2025, after a shoot that spread across India and Thailand. Locations included Punjab, Chandigarh, Maharashtra, Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh, along with Thailand. Some of these areas doubled for the Pakistan-set sequences. Additional filming for the second part took place in January and February 2026.

  Dhar produced the film with Lokesh Dhar and Jyoti Deshpande, under the banners Jio Studios and B62 Studios. The cast is led by Ranveer Singh, with Arjun Rampal, Sanjay Dutt, R. Madhavan, Sara Arjun, Rakesh Bedi, Gaurav Gera, Danish Pandor and Manav Gohil. Several of them return from the first film.

  Those last shooting days overlapped with the film's first public teaser, released on the 3rd of February 2026.

• 4. Music and Marketing

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  Within 48 hours of its release on the 7th of March 2026, the official trailer had collected more than 312 million views across social media platforms. The audience for the sequel had been primed long before that. A post-credits scene in the first Dhurandhar revealed the sequel's title and release date.

  The campaign did not always go as announced. Early reports said the teaser would play in theatres alongside Border 2 on the 30th of January 2026, but that never happened. The teaser instead arrived online, built from footage that had also appeared in the first film's post-credits scene. It carried the song "Aaahh Men!" by Doja Cat, which also plays in the finished film.

  Shashwat Sachdev composed the soundtrack, with lyrics by Irshad Kamil and Kumaar. The label T-Series acquired the music rights for ₹27 crore, taking them over from Saregama. The first single, "Aari Aari", appeared on the 12th of March 2026 and also featured in the trailer. It is a remix of a 2003 track of the same name by the Danish duo Bombay Rockers.

  The second single, "Main Aur Tu", followed on the 17th of March. The full album launched the same day at the NESCO Centre in Mumbai. On the 24th of March, an extended album added eleven more tracks.

  Reviewers generally found the soundtrack effective in driving the film's impact. Some felt it fell short of the energy of the first film's score.

• 5. Release and Bans

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  The 19th of March 2026 was a crowded festival date, since the film opened worldwide on the same day as Gudi Padwa, Ugadi and Eid al-Fitr. Alongside Hindi, it arrived in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada. India's censor board, the CBFC, gave it an A certificate, meaning adults only, for strong violence. Some violent scenes and profanities were cut before that certification, and overseas screenings ran a longer 235 minutes.

  The evening before, paid preview shows were scheduled in all languages. Several screenings were delayed or cancelled. Kannada and Malayalam shows suffered most, hit by technical and censorship-related problems.

  As with the first film, the sequel was banned across the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

  The film's life after cinemas was settled with large sums. JioHotstar acquired the post-theatrical streaming rights across India for ₹150 crore. Outside India, an uncut version marketed as "Raw & Undekha" arrived on Netflix on the 15th of May 2026. It restored unmuted cuss words and extended gory scenes, and made some minor changes to several sequences. An uncut Indian release on JioHotstar was scheduled for the 5th of June 2026.

• 6. Box Office Records

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  By the end of its first week, Dhurandhar: The Revenge had grossed more than 1,000 crore worldwide. Its opening day in India brought in 130-174 crore, and the figure rose to 196-240 crore worldwide once the previous evening's premieres were counted. That made it the biggest opening day ever recorded for a Bollywood film, surpassing the mark set by Adipurush.

  The global opening weekend gross passed $80 million, a figure beaten that weekend only by Project Hail Mary. In rupees, the weekend came to ₹759.91 crore worldwide, with about ₹209.60 crore of it earned overseas. The total reached ₹1,435 crore by the end of the second weekend. It crossed ₹1,500 crore during the second week, faster than any Indian film before it.

  The milestones kept coming in April. On the 5th of April 2026, it became the first Indian film to cross $25 million in North America, and the highest-grossing Indian film in Germany. The next day, it became the first Hindi film to pass 1,000 crore in net collections in India across all languages.

  The final worldwide gross stood above 1,850 crore, without any release in the Gulf countries or China. That placed the film second among Indian films of all time and second among Hindi-language films worldwide. It is the highest-grossing Hindi film domestically, the third-highest-grossing film in India, and the highest-grossing A-rated Indian film ever. It was also the highest-grossing Indian film of 2026 and the ninth-highest of any film worldwide that year. Admissions topped 4 crore.

  Combined with the first film, the duology passed 3000 crore. It has been called the highest-grossing Indian film franchise, ahead of Baahubali and Pushpa. By its fifth week, it had become the top Indian earner in the UK at £4.388 million, in Australia at $8.255 million, and in New Zealand at $1.295 million.

• 7. Critics Divided

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  Nicolas Rapold of The New York Times wrote that the film "amps up the ultraviolence and the provocative mingling of heroic theatrics with India-Pakistan history." That sentence captures the split in the response. Overall, reviews were mixed. Praise went to the performances, the storytelling, the soundtrack and the technical craft. Criticism targeted the violence and the alleged nationalist propaganda.

  Indian trade and mainstream critics were generous in places. Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama gave four out of five, saying its emotional core set it apart from the spectacle. Rishabh Suri of Hindustan Times also gave four, calling it "a roller-coaster thriller that may not match the first film's precision but is elevated by Ranveer Singh's powerful performance and a gripping second half." Vineeta Kumar of India Today awarded 3.5 and called it "loud, unapologetic, and absolutely certain of itself." Kartik Bhardwaj of Cinema Express called it "a masterful, stylish piece of mythmaking that mixes gripping storytelling with heavy political messaging."

  Others were harder on it. Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express gave two out of five, finding that hyper-nationalism and hyper-masculinity quickly blur together. Sakshi Salil Chavan of Outlook also gave two. Sowmya Rajendran of Newslaundry found the sequel "angrier, louder, and more blatant in its messaging" and "emptier" than the first film.

  Length was a recurring complaint. Sajin Shrijith of The Week found it paced differently from its predecessor, with a stretched third act. Devesh Sharma of Filmfare.com called it "a loud, gory, hyper-nationalistic spectacle that storms in with scale and swagger but forgets the value of brevity." Nonika Singh of The Tribune wrote that violence is "its default setting."

  Anuj Kumar of The Hindu offered a verdict that stayed with many readers: the film "roars, but in its deafening cocktail of patriotism and propaganda, it forgets the quiet cost of humanity."

• 8. Fact and Fiction

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  The film opens with a disclaimer stating that it is a work of fiction inspired by real events, not an accurate record of history. It nonetheless draws on Operation Lyari, the 2014 Indian general election and the 2016 banknote demonetisation. Demonetisation even decides the fate of one victim, since the fake currency made by the financier Javed Khanani became useless. The story frames the agent's mission as avenging the 26/11 attacks, and it folds real terrorist attacks on India into its plot. Atif Ahmed, the mafia don from the first act, is a fictionalised version of the slain politician and gangster Atiq Ahmed.

  That character drew the sharpest fact-checking. Dainik Bhaskar reported that the film's counterfeit currency racket was contradicted by chargesheets filed by Uttar Pradesh Police, and that its timeline of his arrest was wrong. The film also presents as established fact an unproven claim linking him to weapons smuggling tied to Lashkar-e-Taiba and the ISI. The Federal noted that no documentation supported any Pakistani link beyond statements by Uttar Pradesh Police. The Indian Express took another view, describing the director's blending of real events with fiction as a deliberate storytelling device.

  The political reading divided commentators further. Variety wrote that the film intensifies existing patriotic sentiment and that its violence exceeds other recent examples of anti-Muslim narrative in Indian cinema. The Federal found that it implies membership of any party opposed to the Bharatiya Janata Party is tantamount to receiving Pakistani funding. Nissim Mannathukkaren of The Hindu argued that it conflates the ruling party with the state and spectacularises nationalist violence. Prathyush Parasuraman of Frontline argued that it instrumentalises both Pakistani and Indian minorities within a nationalist framework. Siddhant Adlakha of IGN warned that mixing real political events into fiction risks inflaming tensions over India-Pakistan relations and the treatment of Indian Muslims. The Economist noted that professional critics on Rotten Tomatoes broadly characterised both films as propaganda for Narendra Modi.

  Not everyone accepted that label. Yasser Usman of NDTV argued that the film belongs to the Bollywood masala tradition and should not be treated as a political manifesto. Nirmalya Dutta of The Times of India questioned whether the propaganda charge is applied consistently across films. A commentator for Open argued that similarly partial readings could be applied to acclaimed Western films such as Saving Private Ryan and Zero Dark Thirty. Vineeta Kumar of India Today said the film targets Pakistani state-sponsored terrorism rather than Pakistan or Muslims broadly. The Independent reported divided audiences and suggested the commercial success may entrench hypermasculine nationalism as a durable formula in mainstream Hindi cinema.

  Outside the arguments, one line escaped into everyday life. The dialogue "Mera Baccha Hai Tu", spoken by Rakesh Bedi as Jameel Jamali in both Dhurandhar films, spread through memes and short-form video. Delhi Police, Wai Wai, Haldiram's and Vadilal all adapted it for their own marketing campaigns.