YouTuber Dhruv Rathee has slammed filmmaker Aditya Dhar over the newly released trailer of Ranveer Singh-starrer Dhurandhar, calling him out for exposing the audience to graphic violence, gore and torture sequences.
The trailer of the spy action thriller has drawn mixed reactions since it was released on Tuesday. While many fans have praised its scale and intensity, others have flagged the level of gory violence, including scenes of characters being skinned alive and beaten to death.
“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”,” Dhruv Rathee wrote on X.
“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,” he added.
Rathee also urged the Central Board for Film Certification to take note. “This is the chance for Censor Board to show if they have a bigger problem with people kissing or watching someone get skinned alive,” he signed off.
Dhurandhar features Ranveer Singh as an Indian spy operating in Pakistan and co-stars Arjun Rampal, Akshaye Khanna, Sanjay Dutt and R Madhavan. Two sequences from the trailer — Arjun Rampal’s ISI Major skinning a person alive, and Akshaye Khanna’s Lahore gangster bludgeoning a man with a stone — have become focal points in the debate over the film’s gory tone.
The trailer for Dhurandhar was unveiled at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) in Mumbai on Tuesday, with Dhar, Singh and the cast in attendance.
The film, which also features Sara Arjun and Rakesh Bedi, is slated to hit theatres on 5 December.