I finally watched Dhura­ndhar. For those of you who have been living under a rock and have no idea what Dhurandhar is, it’s one of the highest-grossing Indian movies in the history of Bollywood, with a second part due to come out this summer.

Set in Lyari, Karachi, Dhurandhar explores the Pakistani political scene through the eyes of an oblivious and rather fanciful Indian writer. It has an ensemble cast, including Ranveer Singh, Akshaye Khanna, Sanjay Dutt, Arjun Rampal, Sara Arjun, Rakesh Bedi, Gaurav Gera and Danish Pandor, some of whom play characters inspired by real-life and well-known characters from Karachi.

The trailer showed promise, and the box-office numbers prove one thing conclusively: good marketing, coupled with jingoism, sells.

I won’t get into the absurd story, the hypernationalist Indian propaganda, or the exaggerated importance of Lyari in Pakistan’s political ecosystem. That debate has already been done to death. What I will talk about is something far more basic: the glaring gaps left by director Aditya Dhar and the art direction team, led by production designer Saini S. Johray, with art directors Yogesh Bansode, Choudhari Nilesh and Neeraj Kumar Singh.

Set primarily in early 2000s Karachi, the Bollywood film Dhurandhar is one of the biggest box office earners of all time in India. However, a closer look reveals a film riddled with glaring errors, making it an unintentional comedy of errors

At times, the oversights are so obvious that it seems that, midway through the film, they all just stopped caring about details.

Before someone says it: yes, I’m deliberately not ranting about poor Urdu pronunciation (“Mai Kalochi” instead of Mai Kolachi) or hilariously incorrect wardrobes. I’m also willing to forgive geographical inaccuracies. The film was shot in Thailand; the greenery and water bodies around the Shershah Bridge, which can be seen in the film’s version of Karachi, are a limitation of location. Fine. I can live with that. My real problem here is the complete disregard for time periods and timelines.

The film opens on the day of the Mumbai terror attacks on November 26, 2008, and then jumps back to 2001, staying largely within the 2001–2002 time frame. This is where things go completely off the rails, either intentionally or due to sheer negligence. Add to that a total lack of understanding of what Pakistan had and what it absolutely did not, and you end up with Dhurandhar: a high-budget comedy of errors.

Given the film’s time frame, here are some highlights — or lowlights — of the errors in the movie:

1. A Pakistan police car in 2001 is featured in the film that Pakistan still doesn’t have. Not to mention police sedans that the police simply did not operate at the time. It was old pick-ups and Suzuki Margallas, period.

2. A bike that looks like a cousin of the Honda CBF 125 or its Chinese equivalents, launched globally post-2010 and in Pakistan around 2015. That’s a casual 15-year slip. Similarly, Toyota Vigos (AN10/20), which were launched in 2005, and Revos from 2015 are sprinkled generously for good measure.

3. Jameel Jamali, played by Rakesh Bedi, clearly modelled on politician Nabeel Gabol, who was born and raised in Lyari, is seen driving a Mercedes-Maybach S-Class (W222). Its production began in 2015. The Maybach badge shown didn’t even exist in that form in 2001.

4. Rehman Dakait, played by the now very viral Akshaye Khanna, the leader of the Baloch gang who formed the Peoples Aman Committee, gifts Hamza Ali Mazari (Ranveer Singh), the protagonist — an undercover Indian intelligence agent who is sent to Lyari to stop possible future attacks on his country — a Royal Enfield 650 Twin. This is a bike that was launched in 2018. The film overshoots the timeline by 17 years.

5. Jameel Jamali, upon someone’s mention of Superintendent of Police Chaudhry Aslam (Sanjay Dutt), quips with humour, “Aslam kaun? Atif Aslam?” Atif Aslam’s debut song (as part of the band Jal) Aadat was released in December 2003. Atif Aslam did not exist in the national consciousness in 2001. And let’s not forget Chaudhry Aslam’s intro scene, which features a 2007 Land Cruiser and a 2016 Revo pick-up.

6. Using Rs1,000 currency notes that were introduced in 2005. Pre-2005 notes were larger and looked completely different.

7. An AR-15 style rifle is used in the gang-wars — a platform that only became widely common after the Iraq War, post-2003.

8. Dubai Airport is shown with Terminal 3 and the modern Dubai Airport logo. Terminal 3 opened in 2008.

9. Casually, one day, Hamza picks up Jameel Jamali’s daughter, Yalina, played by Sarah Arjun, from her house in Karachi on his bike and, in the very next scene, they’re in a high-altitude, Indus-side landscape that looks suspiciously like Skardu. The bike is still there, so no, they didn’t fly. Minutes later, he drops her back home. This means they had casually ridden from Karachi to Skardu (over 2,000 km by road) and back in a day on a bike, and still had time for romance.

10. Casio G-Shock watches from 2013–2015 being worn in early-2000s Karachi. A touchscreen iPhone (from the iPhone 4S era) casually appears as well. In fact, this was peak Nokia 3310 phone time. And in a 2009 scene, Jamali is using the same phone his daughter was using in 2001. Eight years later. Same model. Same world. Apparently, phones in this universe age better than humans.

Last but not least, the biggest and funniest goof-up: during a scene, the on-screen text reads “Aqib Ali Zanwari”, while the banner behind clearly says “Asif Ali Zardari.”

This scene passed through the director, editor, production designer, art directors, colourist, post-production, actors during dubbing, and studio approvals. No one thought, “Maybe we should make the name on the banner and the text match”? This is literally a 10-minute post-production fix.

Every other day, I see posts praising the film’s “peak detailing.” People cite things like how trained assassins grip guns versus street criminals. Honestly, that’s laughable. The director and art directors may have their own set of strengths, but attention to detail is not one of them.

Ultimately, Dhurandhar was a disappointment, except for the last half-hour climax and a kick-ass soundtrack, which genuinely worked. The rest felt like a film that wanted applause for realism… while being spectacularly careless about it.

The writer is a filmmaker, creative director and branded content specialist with over 20 years of experience across South Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached at sami.qahar@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, ICON, March 15th, 2026