Bollywood loves certainty. Not because certainty makes better films, but because certainty makes outcomes easier to predict. A familiar heroine, a clean certificate, a tidy runtime, a theme that doesn’t invite fatigue, a supporting cast that looks current on a trade slide — the industry’s comfort blanket is stitched out of these checkboxes. That’s precisely why Dhurandhar doesn’t feel like just another hit. It feels like a slap to the rulebook.
Because on paper, it had too many reasons to fail or at least to be capped.
Start with Ranveer Singh. Not Ranveer at peak invincibility, but Ranveer in a moment when the ecosystem had begun to over-audit him. In Bollywood, the moment the conversation shifts from star to track record, the narrative becomes louder than the work. Dhurandhar walked into that climate and still placed him at the centre, not as a decorative presence, but as the engine. That casting wasn’t a safety move; it was a challenge. The film invited the audience to watch a performer reclaim his event status in real time. And audiences don’t necessarily reject stars who have hit a rough patch; they reject stars who look like they’re coasting. Here, the energy was the opposite: hungry, aggressive, all-in. The down-but-not-out tag, instead of becoming a weakness, became the emotional voltage behind the film’s swagger.
Then came another anti-formula choice: no established heroine to serve as a marketing cushion. In a star-driven system, the female lead is too often treated as either an amplifier or a familiarity anchor. A new face is framed as a gamble because the industry assumes familiarity sells tickets. But Dhurandhar quietly proved the opposite: when a film is positioned as adult, scale-driven event cinema, audiences aren’t buying a pair, they’re buying a world. In that context, freshness can be an asset. It removes the baggage of overexposure and pre-set expectations. The film didn’t need a known heroine to feel big; it needed a credible world to feel unmissable.
The supporting cast became another pre-release talking point. Sanjay Dutt, Akshaye Khanna, Arjun Rampal; strong names, yes, but not the kind trade chatter routinely labels as recent box office insurance. Bollywood has a habit of treating actors like quarterly results: what’s the latest return? Dhurandhar exposed how shallow that logic is. Sanjay Dutt brings mythic weight, the kind that thickens the air the moment he enters. Rampal has that cold, controlled intensity modern action dramas can weaponise. Akshaye, riding momentum after Chhaava, arrived with something invaluable: audience curiosity. The point wasn’t whether each actor had delivered a mega-hit recently; it was whether they made the film feel dangerous, populated, and cinematic. Dhurandhar used them like instruments, not box office units, and the texture paid off.
Now to the biggest commercial red flag: the runtime. Three-and-a-half hours plus is a logistical provocation. It reduces show counts, makes exhibitors nervous, and hands critics an easy stick even before the first show ends. The standard argument is, audiences don’t have patience anymore. The truth is simpler: audiences don’t lack patience; they lack incentive. They will sit through length if the film keeps paying them back — with escalation, payoffs, and the feeling of a full-blown theatrical experience. Here, the length didn’t read as indulgence to its core audience; it read as value. In a market trained on speed, Dhurandhar made a counter-offer: give me your time, and I’ll give you scale.
Then there was the oft-repeated India–Pakistan theme; a phrase tossed around like repetition automatically equals irrelevance. Yes, the theme has been mined heavily. But fatigue hits when geopolitics is treated like wallpaper. Dhurandhar sold it as a pressure cooker. The hook wasn’t a novelty of subject; it was the urgency of execution. Familiarity became a runway: the audience already knows the landscape, so the film can go harder on stakes and tension.
Finally, the two things Bollywood traditionally panics about: violence and the ‘A’ certificate. The industry reads ‘A’ as limited market, and gore as alienating. Dhurandhar flipped that fear into positioning. The certification didn’t shrink the film, it clarified it. It told the audience: this won’t be sanitised action, this won’t be compromised spectacle. That clarity can be magnetic. People don’t always chase safe; they chase different, especially when different is mounted like an event.
Put it together, and the lesson becomes obvious: Dhurandhar didn’t win despite breaking norms – it won because it broke them with conviction. Bollywood’s so-called norms aren’t laws of audience behaviour; they’re reflections of industry anxiety. And Dhurandhar just proved that anxiety isn’t a business model.
The post No star heroine, 3.5 hours, ‘Adults-only’ certificate, and Gore. Still a BLOCKBUSTER: Dhurandhar broke every Bollywood rule India couldn’t ignore appeared first on Bollywood Hungama.
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