Dhurandhar: The War We Paid to Watch

Dhurandhar has been claimed to be a ‘Spy – Action Thriller’, it delivers everything that the mass market absolutely loves – grand hero entries, iconic dialogues and goosebump-inducingscenes. It’s a film that directly taps into your nationalism and makes you question the political instability of your country, but within the boundaries it has designed. These are the questions the film wants us to ask, so let’s take a deep dive and ask those questions it so carefully avoids. 

At its core, Dhurandhar is not about strategy or security – it is about revenge. It frames war not as failure but as fulfilment. Every setback is engineered to demand retaliation, and the movie slowly builds the satisfaction of striking back. Pakistan is not portrayed as a neighbouring country with political tensions and complexity; it is rather portrayed as the big bad villain, entirely stripped of nuance. For decades, India has maintained a global image – one that leans towards restraint, always. A nation that spoke the language of global diplomacy and strategic patience. But in recent years, the shift in India’s political stance has been impossible to ignore, a louder, almost muscular assertion of power. And that shift is widely negative;it subconsciously depicts retaliation. Movies like URI and Dhurandhar circulate ideas like “Ye naya india hai, ye gharmei ghusega bhi aur marega bhi”, indicating how pop culture and politics go hand in hand. And that is precisely what The Khojbeen has always stood for: The concept that cinema is never apolitical, and that it always has an effect, that it is always negotiating power, ideology, and identity. So, the question is never whether a film is political; the question always is: what politics is it rehearsing?

But this is not to say that making movies like this is wrong. Cinema has every right to explore themes of nationalism, conflict and even anger. Storytelling should not ever be censored into neutrality. Herein, the responsibility shifts to the audience; loving your country is not the same as romanticising war, just like applauding a scene is not equal to supporting its ideology.  The youth must understand that war is never clean, it scars both sides equally, soldiers, civiliansand families who never asked to be a part of the narrative arc. 

And then there are subtle lines thrown around like, “If someday a leader comes to power in UP who actually cares about the country”. Lines that are not placed for applause but are planted by wit, they are not accidental. They gently normalise certain political mindsets. That is why the audience has to be sharper than the script; they should enjoy the craft without absorbing the conditioning. Because repeated imagery becomes a cultural rehearsal, and that shift is indeed a dangerous one. In our opinion, if a kissing scene from the movie ‘Superman ‘can be censored because it might have a negative impact on the youth or audience, even films like Dhurandhar, which have extreme violence and hatred, should have some restrictions because they are bound to createprejudice and a stereotype against a community.

And yet, credit where credit is due, in a generation with an attention span so low, Dhurandhar has managed to keep its audience hooked for a run time of three hours and twenty-five minutes. The credit goes to the fast-paced storytelling, intense performance, and the heavy theme of espionage in the narrative. In technicality, the movie understands its market; it understands how to engineer tension and turn geopolitics into a binge-worthy spectacle. And that craftsmanship of grabbing the attention of this generation deserves acknowledgement. 

But this is precisely why conversations like this cannot be dismissed. A film that grosses 1300 crores at the box office, especially in an age where the audience constantly claims that theatres are “dying”, the success of this movie signals a cultural milestone. It hence also pulls our focus; a movie this popular embeds itself into the cultural bloodstream, dialogues become slogans, and scenes become references. And because of its technical fineness, its messaging slides in effortlessly, and hence demands such discussions – not because they failed, but because they succeeded so powerfully.  

Dhurandhar does not argue for war outright it simply makes sure war feels inevitable, justified, and glorious. That is propaganda at its most sophisticated, and we refuse to pretend this is a harmless phenomenon. When a nation stands up to applaud a film that dresses vengeance as virtue and packages war as destiny, that applause echoes far beyond the theatre walls. ₹1300 crores is not just a number; it is consent at scale. It is proof of what we are willing to cheer for and what we are willing to normalise. Our words might be opinions, so you connect the dots and ask yourself, what exactly are you applauding for, because if an explosion feels patriotic and a war seems satisfactory, then the script has done more than just entertain you – it has influenced you, and that precisely makes this propaganda the most dangerous one, because you are clapping for it.

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