New Delhi, Dec. 5 -- The last thing we hear in Dhurandhar is: "Yeh naya Hindustan hai. Yeh ghar mein ghusega bhi, aur maarega bhi"-this is the new India. It'll break into your home, and kill you too. It's a callback to Aditya Dhar's previous film, Uri: The Surgical Strike, also about an Indian operation conducted on Pakistani soil. The word 'ghusna', with its connotations of an initial breach, feels more appropriate for the 2019 film, which ventures a few miles across the border for a short while. Dhurandhar, on the other hand, barely steps out of Karachi after setting down its bags there in the first half hour. The film is so immersed in Pakistan that India becomes a blip on TV screens.

Hindi cinema was building up to this. Pakistan liv...