Let me begin by saying that I liked the movie, Dhurandhar, the first part more than the second. But overall, both are entertaining movies, with good stories and compelling characters.
I suppose much more can be said about the movie, but this is not a movie review; it is a critical commentary. So, this should suffice.
My somewhat simplistic take on the movie’s success is that it taps into something Indian cinema has rarely explored at this scale: the fantasy of an Indian intelligence operative possessing the same mythic competence that audiences have long accepted in characters such as James Bond, Ethan Hunt, and Jason Bourne—or, for Vin Diesel fans, Xander Cage or Dominic Toretto.
That is, of course, a simplistic take. I am sure there is a whole host of other factors at play. But that is not the subject of this commentary either.
This is a Critical Thought commentary, presenting a problem and a perspective, hopefully, to leave the reader with something to think about.
Let’s begin with the perspective: In most stories inspired by real events, especially those involving intelligence operations, wars, scientific achievements, or national crises, it is almost impossible to faithfully represent the contributions of dozens, hundreds, or sometimes thousands of people. The result is that filmmakers create a single character who becomes a vessel for many real individuals.
A great example of this comes from the acclaimed HBO series Chernobyl.
The series’s main protagonists are Prof. Valery Legasov and Boris Shcherbina. The key Soviet officials who led the government commission managing the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Legasov was the chief scientist providing technical expertise, while Shcherbina was the Deputy Prime Minister directing the massive logistical and operational cleanup. Another character who stands alongside them throughout the story is Prof. Ulana Khomyuk.
Before moving ahead, on a side note, if you haven’t watched the series, it is one of my strongest recommendations—storytelling of the highest order and a remarkably compelling account of one of the greatest disasters in human history and the people who worked to contain it.
Now back. The creators of the series were remarkably transparent in acknowledging that Ulana Khomyuk was not a real person but a composite character representing numerous scientists who worked to understand the disaster, uncover the truth, and protect the public. Rather than claiming a single hero solved everything, the series openly admitted the limitations of storytelling.
Viewed through that lens, the protagonist of the Dhurandhar movies, Jaskirat Singh, becomes much more compelling.
He ceases to be a superhero.
Instead, he becomes a symbol.
A symbol of countless intelligence officers, soldiers, informants, diplomats, analysts, police personnel, and ordinary citizens who, over decades, contributed in ways that will never make it into public records. Some may have prevented attacks. Some may have gathered critical intelligence. Some may have infiltrated hostile networks. Some may have simply stood watch at a border post on a cold night. All of them, just like Jaskirat, have a personal story, beyond their national duties.
The audience sees one face because cinema needs one face.
Reality rarely works that way.
The success of any intelligence operation is almost always cumulative. It is built upon years of information gathering, hundreds of decisions, countless unnamed contributors, and often the sacrifices of people whose stories remain classified or untold. The public remembers the visible outcome; history is usually carried by invisible individuals. The movie does acknowledge a few such individuals through the typical storytelling trope of character reveals.
In that sense, perhaps the most meaningful interpretation of Jaskirat Singh is not as a single spy who accomplished extraordinary things, but as a narrative embodiment of a collective effort.
A character through whom the audience can appreciate a community of service that, by its very nature, cannot publicly tell its own story.
And perhaps that is why the character resonates.
Not because viewers truly believe one man did everything shown on screen.
But because they intuitively understand that behind every nation enjoying a normal day are countless people, known and unknown, whose work made that normalcy possible.
The difference between cinema and history is that cinema compresses many lives into one character. History expands one character back into the many lives that made the story possible.
Now, beyond this perspective, there is a second fold of this commentary, i.e., the problem.
History provides enough examples of governments getting things wrong. Democracies routinely debate policy failures, intelligence failures, and political misjudgments. The problem is not that the film depicts corruption, incompetence, or political compromise.
The leap occurs when a narrative moves from:
“Governments made mistakes”
to
“Successive governments knowingly collaborated with forces actively harming their own citizens.”
Those are fundamentally different claims.
The first is plausible, common, and historically observable.
The second is an extraordinary claim and thus requires extraordinary evidence. It implies not isolated failures but a sustained conspiracy across multiple administrations, institutions, and individuals over decades.
That is where Dhurandhar’s emotional logic and political logic begin to diverge.
Interestingly, the movie itself appears to contain a contradiction. It presents ordinary Pakistani citizens as capable of empathy, humanity, and moral courage. In other words, individual human beings are shown with nuance and complexity.
Yet the same narrative asks viewers to accept that generations of elected leaders on the Indian side acted with near-uniform cynicism and deliberate malice toward their own people.
From a storytelling perspective, one group is treated as human; the other becomes a caricature.
And that is often a sign that a narrative is operating more in the realm of mythology than political analysis.
This is not unique to Indian cinema. Many countries produce stories where national problems can be traced to a handful of villains, traitors, or conspirators. Such explanations are dramatically satisfying because they simplify reality.
The real world is usually less cinematic.
Terrorism persists not because everyone secretly supports it, but because it emerges from a tangled web of geopolitics, ideology, historical grievances, intelligence failures, bureaucratic inertia, strategic calculations, and human error. That explanation is messier, less emotionally satisfying, and far harder to fit into a three-hour screenplay.
I don’t have a problem with the heroism of Dhurandhar’s protagonist, but the casualness with which an extremely serious accusation is woven into entertainment.
If a filmmaker wants audiences to believe that multiple governments knowingly aided terrorist networks, that is no longer merely a dramatic device. It is a claim with profound implications. If such a thing were demonstrably true, it would warrant investigations, accountability, public disclosure, and historical reckoning. Not simply a dramatic reveal followed by applause.
The challenge for politically charged cinema like Dhurandhar is that audiences often leave the theater carrying away not the action sequences, but the underlying assumptions about how the world works.
And perhaps that is the most interesting discussion raised by Dhurandhar:
At what point does a fictional narrative stop being a patriotic fantasy and start becoming a political assertion?
That boundary is often much blurrier than filmmakers—and audiences—realize.
Closing
Movies are a medium for vicarious living, and the success of this movie, to me, is also a reflection of India’s growing self-confidence. Perhaps that is part of what it means to be a young country. After all, roughly 65% of our population is below the age of 35.
But youth can also be impressionable, and that is where we ought to exercise some caution with movies such as this—particularly when the line between fiction and reality is deliberately blurred. Fiction mixed with reality is a difficult balance to strike, and creators working on such a scale should recognize the responsibility that comes with shaping how a society thinks about its own history and reality. There is a difference between taking creative liberties with a character and asking an audience to accept an extraordinary version of reality.
As for the audience, we should be able to fully enjoy the fantasy of the Indian spy without mistaking the fantasy for history. We can celebrate the people Jaskirat represents without necessarily accepting every explanation the screenplay offers for how the world works.
Patriotism does not require us to suspend critical thinking. If anything, a country worth protecting is a country worth thinking critically about.
