The English subtitles in Dhurandhar The Revenge don't get it right, and at regular intervals, the sub-titles and the Tamil dialogues are saying different things.
Those in the audience, who know both languages, can be heard laughing at each blunder, observes A Ganesh Nadar.
IMAGE: Ranveer Singh in Dhurandhar The Revenge.
Key Points
- Dhurandhar The Revenge, a Hindi film dubbed in Tamil, drew a packed audience.
- As soon as R Madhavan arrived on screen for the first time, a huge cheer erupted from the audience.
- Everytime Ranveer Singh kills a terrorist, the audience cheered.
I usually watch Hindi movies in Hindi. This is the first time I am seeing a Hindi movie -- Dhurandhar The Revenge -- dubbed in Tamil. The theatre was packed, so there is a market for Hindi movies in Tamil. Dhurundar 2 turned out to be twice as violent as the first part but the audience was enjoying it.
Dhurandhar The Revenge starts with Ranveer Singh's Jaskirat Singh Rangi taking revenge on a family for kidnapping his sister. He goes on a rampage, killing all the men in the family. Later, we are told that he killed 12 men. He gets sentenced to jail.
While being transferred by the jail officials, he is kidnapped by the Intelligence Bureau and given an assignment in Pakistan to redeem himself. As soon as the officer in charge played by R Madhavan arrived on screen for the first time, a huge cheer erupted from the audience.
Our hero infiltrates a gang in Lyari, Pakistan, and becomes a member. Then, he takes over.
There is a rival gang in that area and they clash. They fire at each other with guns, machine guns, rocket launchers and all kinds of weapons. There are continuous explosions, each louder than the last. Bodies fly all around, and you lose count of who is firing at whom. Finally, our hero wins and the audience enjoys the mayhem.
Key Characters and Political Intrigue
Dhurandhar The Revenge has some important characters you must know.
Arjun Rampal plays Major Iqbal, an ISI officer.
Rakesh Bedi plays Jameel Jamali, an opportunistic politician, who always manages to be on the winning side. He also provides some comic relief in an otherwise serious movie.
Sanjay Dutt plays SP Chaudhary Aslam, chief of a special police task force.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears twice, both times on television. The first time is when he is being sworn in and the second time when he announces demonetisation. Both speeches are not translated to Tamil.
Before the demonetisation speech, Madhavan justifies why it was done. Fake currency of Rs 60,000 crore, printed by Dawood Ibrahim's henchmen, become useless because of demonetisation, but our hero still sets fire to the currency for dramatic effect, even though they don't have any value.
In the entire film, Ranveer Singh, Arjun Rampal, Rakesh Bedi and Sanjay Dutt play a cat and mouse game trying to outwit each other. Surprisingly, they keep meeting each other throughout the movie. Each move results in bodies piling up but nobody seems to care.
Language, Music, and Unexpected Elements
Though the dialogues are in Tamil, the songs are in Hindi.
The English subtitles don't get it right, and at regular intervals, the sub-titles and the Tamil dialogues are saying different things. Those in the audience, who know both languages, can be heard laughing at each blunder.
A surprise element in Dhurandhar is an aging Dawood Ibrahim. Danish Iqbal, who plays him, seems influenced by the Godfather and tries to talk like Marlon Brando. Wonder what Donald Trump would say if he knew that the palatial house in which Dawood Ibrahim lives is called 'The White House'.
Patriotism and Performances
Over the last few decades, there have been a series of terrorist attacks in India. The identity of the terrorists are known and are said to be hiding in Pakistan.
In Dhurandhar The Revenge, our hero tracks down each one of them and kills them or has them killed. Every known type of killing is used and then some. Each time they show a killing, the audience cheered.
Hamza's wife Yalina (Sara Arjun) has a baby boy. For some strange reason, Hamza keeps a secret diary of all the people he is targeting, and she finds it. Her reaction in that scene is quite interesting.
Yami Gautam, who recently earned a lot of praise for her outstanding performance in Suparn S Varma's film Haq, has a cameo appearance in her husband Aditya Dhar's film. Her name, interestingly, is Shazia Bano, the same as in Haq.
Arjun Rampal, Sanjay Dutt and Rakesh Bedi's performances are outstanding, just like Ranveer's. That shows we have a good director in Aditya Dhar.
The set designers and the make-up artists are very good at their jobs.
This is a patriotic movie, so people like it. Manoj Kumar used to make patriotic movies, and I used to like those. But times are different and the audience's taste has changed.
Dhurandhar The RevengeReview Rediff Rating: