Dhurandhar Music Review: Ranveer’s Agent Has Edge, The Album Has A Desk Job

The buzz around Dhurandhar has been deafening for months. Ranveer Singh’s first-look,stylish, smoky, and dripping with Shelby-esque menace,signalled a film ready to dive into the messy, adrenaline-heavy world of an undercover agent who thrives on unpredictability. Naturally, expectations for the music soared too. A film steeped in volatility demands a soundtrack that mirrors its pulse.

Instead, Dhurandhar delivers an album that is polished, earnest, and often interesting,but rarely fearless.

The title track, built on the bones of the Punjabi classic Na De Dil Pardesi Nu, is where composer Shashwat Sachdev shows the most conviction. He doesn’t carbon-copy the original; he repurposes it. Hip-hop swagger fuses with traditional instrumentation, aided by Hanumankind’s grit and Jasmine Sandlas’ fire. It works, not because it’s revolutionary, but because it has a clear point of view,something the rest of the album struggles to maintain.

‘Ishq Jalakar – Karvaan’ is easily the album’s most pleasant surprise. Sachdev pulls the listener into a retro-soul universe with a bassline straight out of a 1960s vinyl groove. Irshad Kamil’s additions to Sahir Ludhianvi’s timeless lines glide over shifting rhythms, and the song feels alive, textured, almost cinematic. If the entire album carried this level of invention, we’d be looking at one of the year’s best soundtracks.

But then comes the drift.

‘Gehra Hua’, despite Arijit Singh’s golden-voice advantage, never quite shakes off its digital sterility. It’s pretty, it’s clean, but it doesn’t breathe. The kind of track that sits neatly on a DAW timeline rather than leaping out of headphones and demanding emotional attention.

And then there’s ‘Run Down The City – Monica’, a trap reimagining that hinges heavily,perhaps too heavily,on the legendary Piya Tu Ab Toh Aja. Asha Bhosle’s instantly recognisable ad-libs give the song its hook, but the production around it feels content with coasting on nostalgia instead of reshaping it. The result is a track that will probably hit hard in a chase scene or nightclub sequence but lacks standalone bite.

Across the album, Sachdev’s instincts are sharp, but his choices feel restrained. The soundtrack consistently flirts with boldness, then retracts. It nods at danger without stepping into it. For a film selling grit, secrecy, and moral ambiguity, the music stays surprisingly well-behaved.

Ranveer Singh may be gearing up to deliver one of his most unpredictable performances, but Dhurandhar’s soundtrack remains a hardworking support act,reliable, carefully crafted, and often enjoyable, yet unwilling to take the very risks the film embodies.

It’s a good album. It just could have been a great one.