EXCLUSIVE | Dhurandhar actor Naveen Kaushik defends film’s violence: 'Quentin Tarantino films also have blood, but that's cinema'

Violence in cinema is often the first thing to invite scrutiny, and in recent years, also the quickest way to polarise audiences. With Dhurandhar, that scrutiny arrived almost immediately, with sections of viewers questioning the film’s graphic brutality and hyper-masculine tone. But, according to actor Naveen Kaushik, who played the character of Donga in the film, those criticisms overlook a crucial truth - in Dhurandhar, violence isn’t a stylistic flourish, it is narrative necessity.

In an exclusive conversation with Firstpost’s Zinia Bandyopadhyay, Naveen Kaushik explained why the film’s gore and aggression were central to its storytelling, arguing that toning it down would have diluted both character and context.

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“You know what, I feel the gore and the violence in this film is a character in itself,” Kaushik said. “From the angle of storytelling, to try and tell the world the kind of terrifying characters that Rehman Dakait and his gang, and Major Iqbal and his team were. You can not brush over the violence; you have to actually show how these are people.”

For Kaushik, the brutality is not spectacle but exposition, a way of communicating the moral landscape of the world his protagonist inhabits. He stressed that Dhurandhar is not about heroic domination or stylised aggression, but about survival in an environment shaped by fear, ideology, and exploitation.

“You have to understand this about the story,” he said. “Hamza’s character is a spy from India who has gone to Pakistan. He is in the midst of all this. He’s not gone in with a team. He’s not gone in with an assault team, trained commandos with weapons. It’s just him and his wits and his ability to survive.”

That isolation, Kaushik argued, is what demands the film’s unflinching tone. Hamza is not surrounded by civilised or morally neutral figures, but by individuals capable of extreme violence, not only towards enemies, but towards their own people.

“He’s gone into this world and he’s surrounded by not civilised, sociable, affluent characters,” Kaushik said. “These are horrible human beings. These are people who are willing to sacrifice their own tribespeople for a profit. These are people who are willing to kill innocent people for their ideology.”

The violence, then, serves a larger purpose- to amplify the psychological and physical terror of Hamza’s mission. “So that’s why,” Kaushik added, “it’s to ramp up the horror that Hamza is putting himself into.”

What makes that horror even more acute, according to the filmmaker, is time. Dhurandhar spans more than a decade, placing its protagonist in constant peril with no margin for error.

“Let’s put this one man and tell him - go and survive there not for one mission, but two decades, three decades,” Kaushik said. “I think the story in Dhurandhar lasts about 12 years. Here’s a man who’s putting himself in that situation for 12 years amongst these people.”

In such a world, even a momentary lapse could prove fatal. “One slip of the tongue, one expression wrong, and the violence that is going to be let on to him - even by people who might trust him, might love him,” Kaushik said. “If they found out that he’s a spy from India, they’re not going to be nice to him. They’re going to completely destroy him. They’re going to kill him. So I think that war was required.”

Kaushik also questioned why Dhurandhar has faced disproportionate criticism for its brutality, pointing to the long-standing acceptance of violence in global cinema.

“People do not have issues with Quentin Tarantino,” he said. “But in all of his films, from Django Unchained to The Hateful Eight to Kill Bill, there is so much blood. But that is cinema.”

The selective outrage, he feels, misses the point. “Ours is being criticised for it. I find that unfair,” Kaushik said. “I do not disregard someone’s opinion, but I find the criticism unfair.”

For Kaushik, Dhurandhar is not an endorsement of violence or hyper-masculinity, but a reflection of a world where brutality is inseparable from survival. To soften it, he suggests, would have been dishonest, not just to the story, but to the characters trapped within it.

_Dhurandhar_ is a Hindi-language spy thriller directed by Aditya Dhar and starring Ranveer Singh in the lead role, alongside an ensemble cast that includes Akshaye Khanna, R. Madhavan, Arjun Rampal and Sanjay Dutt. The film, produced by Jio Studios, released in December 2025 and has been one of the year’s biggest box-office successes, crossing over Rs.1,220 crore worldwide despite facing criticism over its violent content and a ban in some Gulf countries. The second part of the film is gearing up for Eid release this year, on March 19.