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........

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