YouTube activist Dhruv Rathee ignited a firestorm on Tuesday evening, November 18, 2025, by comparing the just-released trailer of the Ranveer Singh-starrer Dhurandhar to ISIS beheading videos, accusing director Aditya Dhar of “unhinged lust for money” and “poisoning the minds of the young generation” with extreme gore. In a series of posts on X within hours of the trailer’s grand launch at NMACC, Rathee called the graphic torture sequences “the equivalent of watching ISIS beheadings and calling it entertainment” and urged the Central Board of Film Certification to decide whether it finds kissing scenes more objectionable than “someone getting skinned alive.”
The backlash centred on two unflinching shots: Arjun Rampal as an ISI major peeling the skin off a captive in a chilling close-up, and Akshaye Khanna smashing a man’s skull with a rock in slow-motion splatter. These moments, set against Shashwat Sachdev’s pulsating score and Ranveer Singh’s blood-soaked spy avatar, instantly polarised viewers. While thousands hailed the trailer as “the darkest, rawest Bollywood has ever gone”, Rathee’s posts (which crossed 15 million views in under 12 hours) framed the violence as gratuitous and socially irresponsible.
Dhurandhar marks Aditya Dhar’s return after the blockbuster Uri: The Surgical Strike and the underperforming Article 370. With a reported ₹350-crore budget, the film casts Ranveer as an Indian operative trapped in Pakistan, alongside Sanjay Dutt, R Madhavan, Akshaye Khanna, and Arjun Rampal in career-defining antagonist roles. Dhar has repeatedly described the project as “unapologetically real”, drawing from documented cases of espionage and the brutal Lyari gang wars in Karachi. The trailer’s tagline, “When the hunter becomes the hunted”, has already trended worldwide at No. 1.
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Responses to Rathee were swift and savage. Several users unearthed old tweets where he had praised Anurag Kashyap’s ultra-violent Gangs of Wasseypur duology, accusing him of selective outrage because Dhurandhar portrays Pakistan’s ISI unfavourably. Military veterans and right-wing influencers labelled the criticism “anti-national”, while meme pages flooded timelines with side-by-side screenshots of Rathee’s past endorsements versus his current meltdown. By midnight, “#DhruvRatheeExposed” and “#DhurandharTrailer” were battling for top spots on Indian trends.
Meanwhile, fans of the film launched counter-campaigns demanding “No cuts, no blurs” from the CBFC, with one viral post declaring, “If Animal could show machine-gun massacres, Dhurandhar can show reality.” Trade analysts predict the controversy will only boost curiosity, potentially pushing the film past the ₹100-crore opening weekend mark when it releases on December 5, 2025.
As the clock struck midnight, Aditya Dhar remained silent, but Ranveer Singh broke it with a cryptic Instagram story: a single blood-drop emoji followed by the release date. In an industry where any publicity is good publicity, Rathee’s scathing attack may have just handed Dhurandhar the most explosive pre-release marketing campaign money couldn’t buy.
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