Millions of words have been written and spoken about Dhurandhar in the two and a half weeks since it was released on screens. Every aspect of the film has been discussed and debated threadbare. Wild conspiracy theories have been floated—for instance, that director Aditya Dhar submitted every page of the script to Narendra Modi for his approval. There is fevered speculation about who the yet-unseen anti-India mastermind Bada Saheb is—is it Masood Azhar or Dawood Ibrahim, or could it even be Osama bin Laden?

But one vital aspect of the film seems to have received little attention: the smoking.

What’s the big deal? people may ask. Films have always shown people smoking. But Dhurandhar does make a big deal out of it without shoving it in our face. Every major male character is a heavy smoker. The very first shot of the film is an extreme close-up of Intelligence Bureau head Ajay Sanyal smoking a cigarette on the desolate airfield of Kandahar where the hijacked IC814 plane is parked.

The cigarette plays a vital role in several other crucial scenes. As crime boss Rahman Baloch is setting off from home to kill rival gang lord Babu Dakait, he puts a cigarette in his mouth and his wife steps up to light it for him—a clear godspeed gesture for his murderous mission.

The brutal cop Chaudhary Aslam is introduced with another extreme close-up, smoking. Deep-cover Indian spy Hamza walks out of a house where he has tied up a gangster and turned on several LPG cylinders. He lights a cigarette and flicks the flaming lighter back over his shoulder into the house to blow the place up and burn the man alive.

Hamza meets his potential father-in-law, who is very unhappy about his daughter’s relationship with him. They talk. Hamza pops a cigarette between his lips and finds that he has run out of matches. Wordlessly, the other man lights it for him. Peace has been made; the marital union has been approved.

Hamza and Aslam kill........

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