Review: ‘Dhurandhar The Revenge’ packed with twists and stellar performances

"Dhurandhar The Revenge" successfully builds on its predecessor, showcasing Ranveer Singh’s Hamza navigating Karachi’s crime underworld. With intense action, political intrigue, and real-life inspired events, the sequel evolves independently, featuring strong performances from Madhavan, Sanjay Dutt, and Rakesh Bedi

A sequel always carries the burden of the original with inevitable comparisons. Very few sequels that seek to continue the saga of a mother movie, manage to come on their own with minimum reliance on the umbilical cord.

‘Dhurandhar The Revenge’ does that. It is not burdened by the euphoria of the original ‘Dhurandhar’, draws minimally and evolves on its own.

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Director Aditya Dhar has so much narrative to build around Hamza (Ranveer Singh) in this installment that he doesn’t have the luxury of looking back too much from the ‘Dhurandhar’.

There are no flashbacks from the ‘Dhurandhar’ though the audience would have loved them. If the first one established Hamza Ali Mazari as a central character, the sequel starts with what made him reach where he is now and hurtles on with what he intends to do now.

The canvas is wider, contours are etched neatly and the narrative progress smoothly for a big screen experience that spans over 3 hours 50 minutes.

The movie just rolls on and on without letting you to sit back and relax. However, in terms of pacing of the plot, ‘Dhurandhar’ had its own kinetics that really left one breathless though ‘Dhurandhar The Revenge’ slows down a tad at some points to establish Ranveer Singh’s backgrounder as a young Jaskirat Singh Rangi whose life comes crashing down due to  a local politician’s evil designs.

Once that motive aspect is revealed, Lyari ki galiyan comes alive with Hamzas’s rise in the Karachi’s crime underbelly. Ascendancy to power comes at a big cost and with lots of scars on an already scarred Hamza. And of course, violence peaking to new levels in its intensity and the mayhem leaving behind a trail of blood and piles of bodies.

From Jaskirat to Hamza, the transition of the central figure is guided by Ajay Sanyal (R Madhavan) and the brief is simple – destruction of those scheming to harm India. The recruiting and training by R&AW done, his infiltration into the crime syndicates is quickly wrapped to the point where the first movie actually began.

The movies threads its way through several actual incidents including the 2016 demonetization, and real life characters that include Pakistan politicians and local crime lords in India, particularly depicting one in Uttar Pradesh.

Revealing too much of the storyline would be depriving the joy of enjoying a good creative cinematic endeavor, for there are some real twists and revelations that need to be savored in the theatres.

Who is the ‘Bade Saab’, the central figure for all the anti-India plotting? Well, check for yourself on screen. And who is the key person who handles all the Indian agents and their controls in Pakistan? This one, you surely will not be able to suspect beforehand, and comes as a real twist in the plot.

All the key characters of ‘Dhurandhar’, except Akshaye Khanna’s Rehman Dakait, assemble back for the sequel. Sanjay Dutt as Chaudhary Aslam is as menacing as in the first while Arjun Rampal as ISI officer Major Iqbal gets more screen time to attempt his nefarious designs.

The presence of Madhavan as Ajay Sanyal is also extended in this movie and he is as good as ever. Danish Pandor as Uzair Baloch, Sara Arjun as Yalina Jamali and Gaurav Gera as Mohammed Alam  continue where they took a pause in the first movie.

However, if one performance that really impresses more is that of Rakesh Bedi (Jameel Jamali) who with ‘Dhurandhar’ clearly is having the best time of his long career.

Ranveer Singh is just Ranveer Singh, a true talent. He is there as Jaskirat, he is there as Hamza, the cruel crime lord in the making, a patriot Indian fighting the enemy on its own turf, pining for his mother, torn at having to leave behind his wife and son in Karachi.

The shades of Ranveer Singh’s character are many and he enlivens each of them with near perfection.

And one does miss Akshaye Khanna. This versatile actor’s menacing yet endearing portrayal of Rehman Dakait is sorely missed in the latest one.