Filming the Deep State: Dhurandhar and a New Cinematic Geopolitics

Dhurandhar opens with a covert border crossing into Pakistan. Ranveer Singh’s Hamza arrives as an untested asset who must embed himself within Karachi’s gang networks. From the first scene the film insists on showing the violence of infiltration so the audience understands that espionage is not a chess match. It is a blood sport.

This film is not for the faint hearted. It is a story about terrorism as an ecosystem built through state complicity, mafia capital and a history of unresolved grievance. It uses cinema to make abstract geopolitics feel personal and unbearable.

Where Terror Is Built, Not Born

The plot moves from the Kandahar hijacking to Baloch separatist politics to the long shadow of 26/11. It refuses to pretend terror erupts out of nowhere. Hamza’s perspective gives viewers a guide to the underworld. He learns how guns are smuggled, how gangs strike alliances with political forces and how the ISI nurtures deniable fighters who can do what official armies cannot. The message is clear. Terror is not ideology alone. It is infrastructure: financing, networks, safe houses, logistics and loyalties available for the highest bidder.

Bollywood usually sanitizes this complexity. Heroes are noble. Villains are evil. Dhurandhar rejects that template. It exposes a darker truth: crime and nationalism frequently share the same ground on both sides of the border.

India Is Not A Saint Either

The film does not give India a moral clean slate. It directly acknowledges corruption, the entrenchment of gang networks and a political class that has long absorbed criminal power rather than dismantle it. It even states outright that India is sometimes its own worst enemy.

This self-awareness is rare in mainstream Indian cinema. Rather than depict all external threats as coming from Pakistan or abroad, it points toward internal structural failures: a state that leaks, a bureaucracy that decays and a justice system that moves too slowly for its people to trust it.

That nuance is missing from films like The Kashmir Files, which weaponize pain into bigotry and make Muslims the singular root of violence. Dhurandhar chooses a harder route. It exposes the underbelly without turning communities into enemies.

From Soft Power Fantasy to Hard-edged Realpolitik

There was a kind of Hindi cinema that built bridges. Veer-Zaara gave cross-border love. Bajrangi Bhaijaan made humanity bigger than the nation-state. Those films imagined a region that could heal.

Dhurandhar belongs to a different genre altogether. It delivers a map of modern geopolitics and mirrors the policy shift in India itself. Earlier governments took a diplomacy-first approach between two nuclear powers. Later governments adopted a more punitive stance. The film trusts the audience to question the outcomes of both strategies.

Casting, Ambiguity and the Male Gaze

One of the smartest creative choices is the casting. Pakistani gangsters and establishment figures are played by Indian icons like Sanjay Dutt and Akshaye Khanna. Their presence injects nuance into antagonists who are usually rendered as caricatures. The moral boundaries blur. That ambiguity is a relief in an industry addicted to clean binaries.

Ranveer Singh, interestingly, is framed almost as the object of desire. In the opening scene he is assaulted by a local thug who tries to rape him. The camera lingers on his vulnerability. For once the gaze turns on male bodies with the same intrusive scrutiny usually reserved for women. It reminds viewers that violence and violation are universal weapons in a patriarchal world.

Women are few in this narrative and the film does not pretend otherwise. Yet the female characters who do exist are not ornamental. Ranveer’s partner, played by Sara Arjun, chooses to leave home, lives with him unmarried on her own terms, demands dignity and remains pivotal to the plot. Though the film does not pass the Bechdel test, these women are portrayed with agency and respect.

The comparison to Animal is inevitable given the genre and star power. However, where Animal rested on glorified misogyny, Dhurandhar places the limited women it includes in positions of emotional authority rather than decoration. Their scarcity reflects the world depicted, not the film’s values.

Style as a Weapon

Dhurandhar uses style as force. The music blends Tarantino-style pulse with regional melody and keeps nerves alert. Brutality happens up close. The body is constantly under threat. Viewers cannot sit back and intellectualize what they see. They are required to feel it.

The problem is stamina. The film is too long. The final act especially indulges in exaggerated fighting. Holes and implausibility appear in the plot. A tighter ending would have shaved off some of the 3.5-hour runtime and heightened the impact.

Final Take

“The best arguments in the world will not change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”

Richard Powers

Cinema shapes not only how a nation sees itself but also the geopolitical imagination it projects outward. It often becomes the zeitgeist long before policy catches up. With Dhurandhar, one can only hope the sequel next March leans into the complexities rather than the binaries, resisting the temptation to glorify any government as infallible.