For most viewers, URI: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Dhurandhar (2025) are two separate films united only by genre. But for those who pay attention to the hidden architecture of national-security storytelling, these films reveal something far more deliberate: the beginning of a connected cinematic universe built by writer-director Aditya Dhar, a filmmaker who treats cinema the way a strategist treats a classified operation.
The clearest evidence of this continuity surfaced through an unexpected detail. In URI, Air Force officer Seerat Kaur mentions her martyred husband, Jaskirat Singh “Rangi”, who died in the Nowshera ambush. In Dhurandhar, Ranveer Singh’s character carries this exact name. Not a variation. Not an inspired reference. The same identity, revived inside a different narrative timeline.
Details like these are never accidental in Dhar’s work. His scripts are structured with the precision of mission reports, names, dates, call signs, and operational behaviour patterns placed with intentional logic. When viewers traced the Nowshera reference, they encountered historical records of multiple ambushes on Indian forces in Kashmir, including a 2013 attack timed a day before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s scheduled visit. Although that ambush occurred in Hyderpora and not Nowshera, the geographical shift in the film feels less like distortion and more like cinematic compartmentalisation, a method of encoding sensitive references without directly mapping them to classified specifics.
The choice of the codename “Hamza” in Dhurandhar, meaning lion or one who possesses courage, further illustrates Dhar’s approach. His characters do not carry names casually; they embody functional purpose. A deep-cover operative infiltrating a hostile network requires a persona built around nerve, threat tolerance, and moral ambiguity. The coding reflects this.
Dhar’s commitment to realism is also visible in his integration of actual 26/11 terrorist-handler recordings within Dhurandhar. These were not recreated for dramatic effect; they were part of the historical evidence base that defined Mumbai’s darkest night. That inclusion shifted the film from fiction to a representation of how terror infrastructures actually operate. And unsurprisingly, it triggered discomfort among outlets who criticise films that portray Pakistan’s role in terrorism with uncompromising clarity.
There is a pattern to this discomfort. Films built around soft narratives, romanticised geopolitics, symbolic harmony, or selective political commentary, regularly receive high praise from certain sections of the media. Films grounded in national security, counterterror operations, or historical violence often receive disproportionately low ratings. The contrast is visible when comparing reviews across titles: Mulk, Pathaan, Chhapaak, Article 15, and Haider consistently earn high scores, while The Kerala Story, Parmanu, Tanhaji, Manikarnika, Sabarmati, URI, and now Dhurandhar often receive minimal critical endorsement. The divide is less about cinematic merit and more about ideological comfort zones.
This context makes Dhurandhar significant beyond entertainment. It is one of the few mainstream films in recent years to engage directly with raw documentation from India’s security history. It portrays cross-border terror networks without euphemism, uses operational terminology accurately, and refuses to sanitise the ethical complexities of espionage. In doing so, it represents a rare example of commercial cinema approaching the subject matter with the seriousness it demands.
And this brings the focus back to Dhar. His work suggests that he is not building standalone films. He is constructing a long-form narrative of India’s modern conflict landscape, one that spans military operations, intelligence failures, political timings, unacknowledged sacrifices, and the evolving nature of asymmetric warfare. The link between URI and Dhurandhar is the first explicit bridge. It is unlikely to be the last.
If patterns in his storytelling are any indication, the full rationale behind location shifts, character identities, and inter-film references may become clear only when the next phase releases possibly tied to dates, operations, or historical events not yet publicly discussed.
What is certain is this: after years of romantic escapism and politically convenient narratives, mainstream Indian cinema has finally encountered a filmmaker who treats national security not as a backdrop but as a discipline. Dhar’s films are not built around spectacle; they are built around structure. And structure always points to a larger plan.
The questions now are simple: How far will this universe extend? What real events will the next film decode? And how much of the past is Dhar preparing the audience to re-examine?
The answers, like any operation, will arrive on their own timetable. Until then, Dhurandhar stands as both a film and a signal, one that suggests Indian cinema is entering a new era of serious, intelligence-driven storytelling.
