The second installment of the Dhurandhar spy thriller franchise, Dhurandhar: The Revenge, opens in North American theaters on Thursday. The sequel arrives with millions of dollars in presales in India following the success of the original film, which became the highest-grossing Hindi-language film ever in both India and North America.

Dhurandhar was released in December last year and became India's highest-grossing film of that year. Directed by Aditya Dhar, the original film follows an Indian spy working undercover in Pakistan.

The film faced criticism from Pakistani officials who called it Indian propaganda and led to a public ban in Pakistan. Pakistani authorities said the film's depiction of gang violence is unfair to the Lyari neighborhood of Karachi. After the film's December release, the Sindh government announced support for a rebuttal film to Dhurandhar, calling Dhurandhar "Indian propaganda." "Lyari stands for culture, peace, and resilience — not violence," the Sindh government said.

The film has been criticized for blending its narrative with real-life events such as the 2001 terrorist attack on India's Parliament and the 2008 attacks in Mumbai. Indian movie critic Sucharita Tyagi said that nationalist films such as Dhurandhar risk encouraging a form of patriotism that deepens hostility between India and Pakistan. "The issue is when you incite an audience, and instead of propagating a message of humanity, you're propagating the anger in a populace that's already angry," Tyagi said.

"To see how many people refused to engage with a point of view that was not aligned with theirs was illuminating," Tyagi said. "It got so overwhelming that on Instagram and YouTube, I had to turn off the comments. And I've never had to do that before." "No one should watch a film and leave it that kind of angry," she said.

Jyoti Deshpande, President of Mumbai-based Jio Studios, defended the film's approach. "When a story is inspired by real events and complex geopolitical realities, intent and responsibility must go hand in hand with cinematic ambition," Deshpande said. "Our approach was to present a more nuanced take on patriotism while at the same time remaining highly engaging through immersive storytelling that allowed viewers, regardless of geography, to be invested in the narrative." "Audiences didn't just watch it, they interacted with it, debated it, and made it their own. That is what sustained momentum two months in," she said.

Despite being banned in Pakistan, Dhurandhar has been widely pirated there. The film was released on Netflix on January 30 and topped the Netflix chart for non-English films. Dhurandhar is one in a series of box-office hits with nationalist messaging since Narendra Modi took office in 2014.