'Sociopathic, hateful jingoism': International press not impressed by Aditya Dhar's Dhurandhar 2 even as it mints $100M

Dhurandhar The Revenge, starring Ranveer Singh, has failed to impress international critics despite its impressive box office run.

Aditya Dhar-directorial Dhurandhar 2 has been minting money worldwide. The spy thriller, starring Ranveer Singh in the lead, has crossed the $100-million mark worldwide in just six days, earning ₹575 crore net at home and over $27 million overseas. This includes a stellar $15-million run in North America. However, despite this mania, critics from around the world are unimpressed. Even as reviews back home are largely positive, Dhurandhar The Revenge has copped its fair share of criticism abroad.

Dhurandhar 2: Ranveer Singh in a still from the film.

International press slams Dhurandhar 2

On Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator site, Dhurandhar 2 has an approval rating of just 38%, with only 5 of the 13 reviews being positive. Interestingly, all five positive reviews belong to Indian publications or reviewers. All the reviews from international publications or those written by foreign critics have slammed the film for both its violence and politics.

Writing for the New York Times, Nicolas Rapold says, “The music feels less like punchy needle-drops than the background to gaming, which one first-person-shooter flourish evokes. The first installment’s critics might think this sequel further desensitizes viewers to violence along national or religious lines. It’s a movie of the current moment, which isn’t exactly a comfort.”

In her review for Movies We Texted About, Sarah Manvel is even more scathing. “By the end it’s downright routine for someone to be beat up, chained, stabbed, doused with gasoline, shot and then set on fire in order to be killed. The brutality and gore is so serious that the use of Rasputin by Boney M in one frankly racist sequence is not actually funny. The entire experience is sociopathic,” she writes.

‘Hateful rhetoric about certain ethnicities’

The film’s politics has seen some criticism in India as well, with the likes of political commentator Dhruv Rathee calling it brain rot and saying that unlike part 1, the sequel ‘is not even well-made propaganda’ anymore. The international reviews have also highlighted this aspect.

“Dhurandhar: The Revenge mainly cares about trying to outdo 2025’s Dhurandhar in being bloated, repetitive, and showing twisted and vile murders with hateful rhetoric about certain ethnicities. The movie has a lot of high-budget spectacles in the action scenes, but the movie’s dramatic scenes are weak and have shallow characters. Dhurandhar: The Revenge is just an empty excuse to show a fictional and fanatically jingoistic and sadistically violent version of real-life historical events,” writes Carla Hay for Culture Mix.

Yet, despite the negative reviews, Dhurandhar 2 has continued to mint money, even in the West. Despite no release in the Gulf, the film has already amassed $27 million overseas. In the US, it was the second-highest-grossing film in its opening weekend, behind only Ryan Gosling’s Project Hail Mary. Talking about its box office success, Sarah Manvel wonders, “There is so little enjoyment to be found in Dhurandhar The Revenge that it’s hard to fathom as to why audiences are flocking to see all this horror. Is the real world so awful that our only joy is watching people we’re supposed to hate suffering six different ways before they die?”

All about Dhurandhar 2

A sequel to the 2025 blockbuster Dhurandhar, the spy thriller from Aditya Dhar stars Ranveer Singh as an Indian spy in Pakistan. The sequel also stars R Madhavan, Arjun Rampal, Sanjay Dutt, Rakesh Bedi, Sara Arjun, and Danish Pandore in pivotal roles.