Mumbai: Popular content creator and political commentator, Dhruv Rathee slammed filmmaker Aditya Dhar for promoting violence and torture as entertainment in the Ranveer Singh starrer ‘Dhurandhar’.
Comparing the ‘Dhurandhar’ trailer to watching ISIS beheadings, he criticised the filmmaker for his ‘lust for money’ in making such violent films.
Hours after the trailer release of ‘Dhurandhar’, Dhruv took to his X handle (now called Twitter) on Tuesday and wrote, “Aditya Dhar has truly crossed a limit of cheapness in Bollywood. The extreme violence, gore and torture shown in his latest film trailer is the equivalent of watching ISIS beheadings and calling it “entertainment”.”
Criticizing the film, he added, “His lust for money is so unhinged that he is willingly poisoning the minds of the young generation, desensitizing them to gore and glorifying unimaginable torture.”
Urging the Central Board for Film Certification (CBFC) to look into the film’s extreme violence, he concluded, “This is the chance for Censor Board to show if have a bigger problem with people kissing or watching someone get skinned alive.”
The two scenes which promote gore and violence in the film includes, one where Arjun Rampal (who plays an ISI Major) is seen skinning a person alive and the other, where Akshaye Khanna (who plays a Lahore gangster) beats a man to death with a stone.
However, netizens apparently aren’t quite bothered watching violence on the silver screen.
“The energy the darkness the atmosphere… it feels like Shashwat just opened a new chapter in Indian music,” wrote one, praising the background music.
“To the Censor Board: Jaisa trailer me dikh raha hai ekdum waisa he theatre me bhi dikhna chahiye (We need to see it in theatre exactly how it is shown in the trailer). NO CUTS NO BLURS,” another urged the CBFC.
When an X user pointed out that Rathee had previously praised Anurag Kashyap’s ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’, a film also known for violence, the content creator responded, “I was wrong, back then I didn’t understand the impact such films have on society.”
Reacting to Rathee’s criticism, actor Ranvir Shorey took a dig at him saying, “Buddy, you’re wrong most of the time, but I love how you’ve turned that into a career.”
Hitting back at Shorey, Rathee commented, “Better than a career where you have to do fake fights on Bigg Boss for livelihood.”
Meanwhile, ‘Haq’ director Suparn S Varma also came out in support of the film, criticising the double standards over how Indian films are judged compared to foreign films.
Addressing the issue publicly, while calling the backlash for ‘Dhurandhar’ as hypocrisy, the director wrote, “I’m just amazed by some of the chatter about the violence in #Dhurandhar the same viewers would have called it cinematic brilliance if this was in any other language or a Korean or Japanese film. It’s high time we started to celebrate Hindi cinema and its filmmakers with the same passion we celebrate all makers and films. Each filmmaker comes with his/her unique voice and identity and background & I have been left spellbound by the world and characters created by @adityadharfilms and his amazing team (sic)!”
Besides Ranveer, the spy thriller also features Arjun Rampal, Akshaye Khanna, Sanjay Dutt, and R Madhavan in pivotal roles.
The film is set to release in theatres on December 5.
