Dhurandhar has reached that enviable position in showbiz where you can love it or hate it but cannot ignore it. Looks like half the Hindi-speaking Indians in India (and Pakistani spies, if any) have watched it already and the rest are planning to watch it this week - making Taran Adarsh the most excited person in the country.
I watched it - on the first Friday itself - because the film checked all the boxes I look for. Director track record, rocking cast, retro-themed soundtrack, tantalising 'true story' and all that. I thought each tech element was fantastic, without any logic to hold it all together. Forget having reasons for each event in the film, there are actually good reasons why they should NOT have happened the way they did.
Consider this: a super-popular Mafia don has the patronage of the country's 'Prime Minister' and wins an election in his hometown. He is targeted to be ambushed (and killed) by a police task force. The ambush eventually happens due to three people in a car falling asleep and then failing to overpower one traitorous driver. Of course, the killing of the darling of the masses is not supposed to cause any repercussions for anyone.
But keeping that (and other plot holes) aside, here is the plot of Dhurandhar: Deeply embarrassed by Pakistan's brazen terror attacks, the Indian 'establishment' embeds a spy inside what it considers the enemy nerve-centre. The spy manages to painstakingly collect sensitive information (that would be handy for his side), and slowly get to positions of power. But he also has major setbacks, but they are kind of expected in the slow-burn, long-term espionage assignments. The film will have a second part, which promises that once stars align, the spy would come into his elements and dismantle all that is holding India back.
Now, the question is: who is the spy?
While eyes are trained on Hamza Ali Mazari (Ranveer Singh), my humble suggestion is that the true Dhurandhar is Ajay Sanyal (played by R Madhavan).
Here is a government servant - operational between 2000 and 2009 in the film - who inserts an agent in Pakistan who literally enables 26/11 (that embarrasses the Indian government to an abysmal extent), gets and holds back key information about counterfeit notes (because he thinks the current government won't act on it), and then says that he is waiting for a government that would be 'concerned about the country'.
Looks like he was in a talaash for both humsafars and karvaans...
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