SHASHWAT SACHDEV - Dhurandhar: The Revenge

“Dhurandhar” is one of the most talked-about franchises of the last two years in “Bollywood,” the Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry. Directed by Aditya Dhar and starring Ranveer Singh, the saga consists of two installments, “Dhurandhar” (2025) and “Dhurandhar: The Revenge” (2026), and tells, in a heavily fictionalized form, the story of an Indian intelligence operation carried out on Pakistani soil: an undercover agent infiltrates the criminal networks of Karachi and Balochistan to fight terrorist organizations, in a plot loosely inspired by real geopolitical events, from the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament to the hijacking of flight IC-814. The project, among the most expensive and highest-grossing in recent Indian box-office history, has also stirred controversy for its markedly nationalist framing of the conflict between the two countries.

Soundtracks for blockbusters often risk becoming little more than a grab-bag of unrelated singles, designed more for playlists than for supporting a narrative arc. “Dhurandhar: The Revenge” largely avoids that trap: working within the confines of a mainstream action epic, Shashwat Sachdev builds a coherent project in which the various musical choices help shape the film's cinematic universe. Not everything works equally well, but the overall result shows a level of care well above average for this kind of production.
The composer reunites with Aditya Dhar after “Uri: The Surgical Strike” and the first “Dhurandhar.” The two have developed a creative rapport that goes beyond the usual director-composer relationship: the score takes shape alongside the screenplay and the edit, actually shaping the film's pacing. Released just a few months after the soundtrack to the first chapter, “The Revenge” naturally continues that sonic language, to the point that it could almost be considered a twin record, picking up the same blend of electronic music, traditional sounds and references to popular repertoire. The two works seem to have been conceived from the outset as a single, sprawling musical fresco split into two chapters.

The project's ambition is clear right from its structure. The extended edition runs past the hour mark and moves freely between hip-hop, trap, electronic music, qawwali, Punjabi folk, Indian classical music and international pop, while still holding onto a reasonable stylistic unity. Sachdev shows a remarkable ability to absorb different musical languages within a strongly cinematic style of writing, even if the sheer amount of material on display sometimes tips over into overload. His idea of hip-hop as an open genre, capable of absorbing any musical tradition, is put to effective use here, even if it rarely delivers real surprises.
The album's most debated aspect remains, inevitably, its heavy use of sampling. Yet these nods to the historical repertoire also work as narrative devices, helping to sketch out the film's cultural geography, suspended between India, Pakistan, Balochistan and the Middle East. In that sense, the soundtrack functions almost like a musical map, where each tradition helps define a particular cultural and religious context: Sufi traditions converse with trap beats, Arabic melodies coexist with symphonic orchestration and electronic bass, while the memory of popular Hindi cinema is continually reworked through a contemporary sensibility.

The approach is often effective, but it doesn't always shake off the impression that Sachdev is leaning on the strength of already highly charged source material. The writing favors density and immediate impact, mirroring the film's own hypertrophic nature. That approach serves the images well, but makes listening to the album on its own terms more demanding, and at times unfocused.
Such an ambitious approach carries its own risks. Some passages seem to rely a little too confidently on the evocative power of the sampled tracks, and not all the reworkings reach the same level of impact. Within the context of “Dhurandhar: The Revenge,” though, the choice remains consistent with the work's overall aesthetic: Sachdev lays his sources bare and reworks them within a language that thrives on the tension between memory and the present day.
Qawwali occupies an important place in the soundtrack, not only for its musical weight but also for its narrative function. The reworkings of “Dil Pe Zakham Khate Hain” and “Man Atkeya Beparwah De Naal,” turned respectively into “Jaan Se Guzarte Hain” and “Destiny – Mann Atkeya,” preserve the ecstatic intensity of Sufi singing while immersing it in an electronic production built from synths, deep bass and hip-hop pulses. The result is evocative and well integrated into the film's atmosphere, even if the contrast between tradition and contemporary production sometimes proves more effective atmospherically than compositionally.

The soundtrack also opens up toward North Africa and the Arab world. “Didi (Sher-e-Baloch)” reworks the famous raï hit by Khaled through a production involving musicians from the Maghreb and the Persian Gulf. The choice carries real dramatic weight: accompanying the sequences set in Balochistan, the track hints at the transnational nature of the criminal organizations depicted in the film. It's not mere local color, but a way of translating the story's geopolitical complexity into music. Here too, the narrative function seems to take precedence over any genuinely radical musical transformation.
The mining of Hindi cinema's back catalogue is just as extensive. Kalyanji-Anandji's “Tirchi Topiwale” (“Tridev,” 1989) gives rise to the explosive “Rang De Lal (Oye Oye)”; Anand-Milind's “Hum Pyar Karne Wale” (“Dil,” 1990) is reworked in a hip-hop key; Bappi Lahiri's “Tamma Tamma Loge” (“Thanedaar,” 1990) becomes a jarring counterpoint to one of the film's most violent sequences; R. D. Burman's “Kabhi Bekasi Ne Maara” (“Alag Alag,” 1985) resurfaces in the melancholy “Bekasi.” Even the West finds a place on the album, through the use of “Rasputin” by Boney M., whose famous Eurodisco groove is dropped into one of the film's bloodiest moments, in a defamiliarizing gesture reminiscent of certain strands of postmodern cinema.

These are generally effective moves, and in some cases particularly successful ones. Sachdev proves himself above all a skilled orchestrator and producer, able to fit very different materials into a coherent sonic framework. His writing leans mainly on reworking existing material rather than building new themes or structures.
The strongest moments come when Sachdev eases off on the production and lets the melodic side breathe. “Phir Se,” performed by Arijit Singh, is probably the most compelling track on the whole record: after a long stretch of aggressive rhythms, saturated synths and constant tension, the song introduces a note of fragile humanity that gives the protagonist real emotional weight. The decision to entrust the main theme to the veena, an instrument deeply rooted in Indian classical tradition, creates an effective contrast and reveals a more measured side of Sachdev's writing.
“Aari Aari” goes in the opposite direction, and works almost as the record's mission statement. This reworking of the Bombay Rockers track turns a bhangra hit into a contemporary war anthem, propelled by a massive production and a well-judged vocal cast. Jasmine Sandlas, a recurring presence throughout the album, proves remarkably versatile, equally at ease on the most aggressive tracks and on the more melodically intense pages. But it's also an example of the tendency toward overstatement that runs through the project: the impact is immediate, while the depth of the writing remains more questionable.

Even in its most spectacular passages, the care given to sonic detail remains evident. The background score deserves separate mention: rather than simply accompanying the images, it builds a continuous psychological tension through leitmotifs, deep frequencies and a layering of timbres that lends weight even to the more conventional sequences. It's one of the areas where Sachdev's work is most convincing: the music creates a sonic environment that's coherent and functional in relation to the images. Where the narrative sometimes makes the protagonist feel almost invulnerable, the music still manages to suggest danger, instability and unease, adding depth to certain sequences. Sachdev's work thus ends up partly compensating for some structural weaknesses in the screenplay. The richness of the arrangements, though, doesn't always translate into equally strong compositional writing: in some passages, the layering of timbres seems aimed chiefly at impact, yielding results that are more spectacular than memorable.

“Dhurandhar: The Revenge” is a successful soundtrack, above all for the quality of its production and its use of references to Indian musical tradition and popular repertoire. The sampling and the running time end up weighing down the listening experience as a standalone record, though, while the abundance of the arrangements doesn't always match an equally original approach to composition. The best moments are those where Sachdev dials back the emphasis and lets the melodic and emotional side come through.

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19/08/2026