Director Ram Gopal Varma has been singing praises of Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar for a few days now. In a recent interaction, the filmmaker compared the film to Mahabharata and claimed that other filmmakers and producers are “scared” after Dhurandhar’s success as it has forcEd them to rethink how action sequences are presented in their films. The action scenes of Dhurandhar were widely appreciated by fans.
‘Directors are scared after Dhurandhar’s success’
Speaking to NDTV, he said, “I’m not trying to demean any film, but the type of action in which people are thrown in the air…. The audience is used to seeing that kind of action in big films which have been released in the last 7–10 years. In Dhurandhar, the action seems real, it is how it will happen and that is being liked so much more by the same crowd who watches over-the-top action.”
He added, “I think makers will have a wake-up call now. They will be scared on whether that kind (over-the-top) of action will work now after this film. It is a film that made everyone rethink, go back to the scripts that are under production, I know 3–4 director friends of mine who are scared about what is going to work, whether what they are making will work? That is the effect of this film. This is why I think it is far more than just a film. This is the reason I called it a quantum leap.”
Ranveer Singh in a still from Dhurandhar.
‘The film industry ignored Dhurandhar’s success’
RGV also claimed that many in the film industry initially ignored the success of Ranveer Singh-starrer Dhurandhar. He said, “I believe it is a horror film because it is scaring everyone. Do you have the capacity to imitate this film? If some films would have released after Dhurandhar, I’m not sure how they would have done. Most of them would have been laughed out of the theatres. Now the films that are in production have to go back and revisit how they are planning their action sequences. Most of the time the film industry wants to ignore something that becomes highly successful because they don’t know what to do.”
‘Dhurandhar is a realistic Mahabharata’
Comparing Dhurandhar to Mahabharata, RGV said, “I think it’s (Dhurandhar) somewhere between the characters of real life and Mahabharata, you know, because if you look at it, when a guy like Babu Dakait is introduced, in big font coming with the background score, it already psychologically kind of hypes up the man, even without you knowing what he does, which is pretty much what they’ve done with every character. So that is what I meant by psychological play of violence—the very word Dakait itself.”
Ranveer Singh in a still from Dhurandhar.
He continued, “And I don’t know if it’s a surname or whatever the hell it is, but the moment that name came, that guy got etched in my mind. He was hardly there for probably 20 minutes. But I can’t forget the face of Babu Dakait. That is what I mean by Mahabharata. Very realistic Mahabharata, for me. That was what Dhurandhar was about.”
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Sunny Deol’s performance in Gadar looks unreal in front of Ranveer’s Hamza
RGV compared Ranveer Singh’s portrayal of Hamza in Dhurandhar to Sunny Deol’s performance in Gadar, stating that the latter looks “unreal” in comparison. He said, “He (Sunny Deol) says ‘Dhai kilo ka haath’, then he starts shouting and all that in the most unreal manner. And here, Hamza (Ranveer Singh) doesn’t even speak most of the time. I mean, you don’t even know what he’s thinking or what he’s up to and all that.”
“That is a height, because a spy is not supposed to make his presence felt all the time—he’s disappearing into the story. That’s [the] hero, whereas in all the other films, the stories constantly keep elevating, pushing him up and things like that. That’s the exact opposite of what’s happening in Dhurandhar,” added RGV.
