For a second time in two months, a woman disapproves of her gangster-husband betraying her nation. It happened recently in Vishal Bhardwaj’s O’Romeo, when Rabia (Tamannah Bhatia) confronts Jalal (Avinash Tiwary; a stand-in for Dawood Ibrahim) for allying with the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI. In Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar: The Revenge, Yalina (Sara Arjun) aims a glock at Hamza (Ranveer Singh) when she finds his secret diary with names of targets — all of them said to be embroiled in terror attacks in India.“I looked the other way when your lies were related to your business. But now, it’s about my mulk (nation),” Yalina says, not once stuttering through the absurd statement. Drugs, arms dealings, counterfeit currency are… fine. Unpatriotic behaviour from renowned gangsters is where we draw the line in 2026. Even if one were to ignore the silly logic, nothing explains why a spy, who has been behind enemy lines for more than a decade by now, hides a diary (the only thing compromising him) in a place where his wife can find it with one deep-search of his cupboard. Or why Hamza can’t deflect, after all it’s a list of names in a diary – most of whom are colleagues. It might be too much of a psychological pirouette for Dhar’s brawny, slow-witted sequel.R. Madhavan in a scene from Dhurandhar: The Revenge trailer. Photo: Screengrab from Youtube video/JioStudios and B62 Studios.Picking up where the first part ended – Dhurandhar: The Revenge resumes with Hamza’s backstory, whose real name was revealed to be Jaskirat Singh Rangi. He’s a death-row inmate recruited for Operation Dhurandhar – a deep-undercover spy programme birthed by the perpetually smug Ajay Sanyal (R. Madhavan, stand-in for Ajit Doval).Dhar teases us with an impressive sequence taking place in a house in the pind (village), where Jaskirat massacres a dozen men of a local MLA. The politician beat his father to death and raped his sisters over a land dispute. While one sister is also murdered, the other is being held hostage in the MLA’s house. The sequence, scored to a remixed version of Aari Aari (by Shashwat Sachdev and Bombay Rockers), hits its stride when Jaskirat stands up and a firecracker behind him mimics the shape of the sudarshan chakra. Starting with a quote from the Bhagavad Gita about dharma (‘duty’), and now with Jaskirat entering a chakravyuh (maze), even the Hindu symbolism works. It’s a righteous cause as he carries out the most violent form of ‘justice’. We’re told Jaskirat was training to be in the Indian army, and Singh performs like a man possessed – nothing held back. The film soon trades this early promise for something far more programmatic, going into a logical tailspin.What’s genuinely admirable about Dhar’s two-part film, with a collective runtime of over seven hours, is how well it panders to the audience. There’s a slow-motion introductory sequence and a needle-drop every ten minutes or so. It’s the constant stimulation needed by an audience used to watching 10-second reels. The Dhurandhar films might be the closest to reiterating the form of ‘viral content’ in films – because of how more than a dozen phones came out in my theatre to record key sequences, so people could brag about having watched it. It’s not good enough to watch Dhurandhar, one also has to be seen watching it. Whether the dozen slo-mo sequences or the needle-drops further the narrative is not to be debated. The audience being immersed enough to not see the filmmaker’s cynical design, is itself a huge success.After Rehman Dakait’s (Akshaye Khanna) death in part one’s climax, Lyari’s throne lies vacant once more. Arshad Pappu (Ashwin Dhar) assumes control of the region, while Uzair (Danish Pandor) takes it upon himself to avenge Rehman’s death for which Arshad is at fault – which Hamza drills into Uzair. After a video of Arshad’s murder circulates, where Uzair can be seen beheading him and then dribbling with his head, an arrest warrant is issued in his name. Thus clearing the way for Hamza to become the leader of the Balochs, after Uzair is sent away to Dubai for his own ‘safety’. There’s material for political intrigue here, as Hamza manipulates the people around him – something Dhar is not crafty as a writer to lean into.All of Hamza’s ploys seem to take place on cruise control, where he bumps one person after another, and no one catches wind. Even the one cop who has his suspicions about him, discusses it with S.P. Khan (Sanjay Dutt) in Hamza’s driveway, in the most indiscreet fashion. It’s logically painful beyond a point. In its second half, Dhar’s film becomes a feature-length sized apologia for the demonetisation scheme. We’re told about the ISI’s plans to inject fake currency worth Rs 60,000 crore into India. And hence, Sanyal – who is now working closely with the prime minister and the home minister (which he wasn’t able to do in the first film) – requests emergency measures. And hence, November 8 takes place. People in my theatre clapped and hooted, when a character cartoonishly panics after being left with a warehouse full of fake currency. I wondered if they forgot the plight of standing in queues, or the extended coverage on how the exercise was an overall failure (99.3% of the demonetised currency was found to be back in circulation, as per the Reserve Bank of India). It’s one thing to be enamoured by a political party, but the way Dhar writes fan-fiction is both hilarious and disturbing. Everything Hamza does as the strong-man of Lyari is to destabilise the ISI and Pakistan’s crime-political syndicate. It’s one ‘masterstroke’ after another by R&AW, while the ISI looks buffoonish, bested in one plan after another. And yet, no one blames Hamza for it. Dhar implies billions of dollars are routed into India, funnelled through “NGOs, universities and socialist organisations”. The fake currency is said to be distributed through ‘butcher shops’ in Uttar Pradesh. Of all the Trojan horse devices used to praise Modi, one I was genuinely surprised by was a retired Brigadier Jehangir (Suvinder Vicky, no less). More than once, he stares at the TV in disbelief and mutters under his breath. “We’ve lost control of India,” he says, as Modi takes oath in 2014. I laughed at these scenes, but there were people around me who cheered.One more thing I believe Dhar is good at, is weaponising patriotism against those who don’t fall in line. There’s a call where Sanyal takes great pleasure in making the IC814 mastermind Zahoor Mistry chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai (Long live Mother India!) before his face is obliterated with bullets. I suppose Dhar doesn’t care about videos, where mobs force Indian Muslims to chant similar things before flogging or lynching them. I don’t think the audience around me was too bothered by those videos either, because they relished it as much as Sanyal. Arjun Rampal in a scene from Dhurandhar: The Revenge trailer. Photo: Screengrab from Youtube video/JioStudios and B62 Studios.The violence in Dhurandhar: The Revenge is more gratuitous and sadistic compared to the first film. Especially, when seen along with the colourful dialogue by Major Iqbal (Arjun Rampal) screaming about his end-goal to rape all Indian women, circumcise all Indian men, and make everyone read the kalma (Muslim religious text). These are lines out of a WhatsApp forward, and therefore (I’m assuming) music to the ears of most bigoted uncles around me. Dhar’s film oscillates between a cool spy thriller, and a sentimental soap opera about loving one’s country. I laughed aloud each time Hamza, a deep-undercover spy, reverentially took off his sunglasses and stopped in his tracks after coming across news of the Indian army. But that may be a minor lapse in subtlety from a filmmaker whose ideological convictions feel far more concerning. Dhurandhar: The Revenge is made for the same sycophantic audience, who tune into TV news each night. It’s ugly, lopsided, and operating in bad faith to garner a viewership. It might issue a disclaimer of not being a ‘documentary’ at the start, but it doesn’t mind using real-life traumas to fuel an ideological warfare that is less fictitious than Dhar and his crew would care to address. It might wear the veneer of an ‘entertaining’ film, but it can’t handle the minutest probing of logic for what it is espousing or depicting. From the cheers I heard when the film concluded, I realised that I was among the few to take offence to the film’s ulterior motives. As much as I hate to generalise something as subjective as a film’s experience, I found myself thinking that maybe it’s what the mobs in theatres want these days: they want to be pandered to, they want to be misled. After all, Dhar’s film is not trying to convince you — it’s counting on you to not care.*Dhurandhar: The Revenge is playing in theatres.