Dunki (2023) – Bittersweet

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Genre: Drama + Comedy

Platform: Theatrical Release

Duration: 2 Hours 35 minutes

In the concluding chapters of my book on Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s films, Human Cinema, I mentioned that Rajkumar Hirani was a worthy inheritor of the Hrishida school of filmmaking, where the most serious subjects would be handled in a light-hearted way without being flippant. Dunki doesn’t disappoint from that context, though it’s uneven when it “goes abroad”. Since the theatre audience laughed at all the right places and at times quite loudly, it was clear that the” light-handed touch” was very much to the audience’s liking.

Dunki is a corruption of Donkey, a catchphrase for illegal emigration to the West. Since the craze in Punjab is to go to the UK or Canada, the “dunkis” try to do everything possible.

Their routes are filled with risk and death at each stage. Three members of the party of six, are killed in Iran. In turn, Hardy kills the soldiers and continues the journey. The real trouble begins when they land in the UK and find that Balli had lied about his job while he was staying with illegal immigrants in a run-down district. Thus begin their real travails – to stay illegally or to go back and face the dishonour and shame.

Till the interval when Sukhi dies, everything is light-hearted. After Sukhi’s death, the post-interval section when the “dunkis” start their journey is filled with gloom and doom. Much like Munnabhai MBBS when “Dr.Munna” can’t “cure” the sick cancer patient, leading to his realisation that he is a fake, the middle section of the film is a bit heavy as Hardy tries various schemes, and that’s why it gets a bit uneven in the middle.

However, the film gets back to its light-hearted way in the final half an hour when the trio Mannu, Balli and Buggu decide to head back to Dubai to meet Hardy, who has promised to get them back to India at any cost, and this is where the film regains its lost light-hearted feeling.

There is a lot of talk about mitti and honour and so on. Yet the quartet is hell-bent on emigrating abroad, which is naturally a contradiction. The various ways in which they are “smuggled” over months across multiple countries are based on real-world stories of illegal immigration. In the closing moments, the “film techniques” and “real world pictures” of the same techniques are shown to tell us that the methods are very much real. The film closes with a slight cautionary note with some onscreen statistics of illegal immigration. Even as we read this, there is flight supposedly full of illegal immigrants detained near Paris. The origin of most of these passengers? Mostly from Gujarat and Punjab.  The target country? That other Mecca for illegal immigrants – the USA.

It’s a Shahrukh Khan fest from the first to the last reel, and he is in fine form, though I dare say that his age is showing clearly now. Every other performer is in great form, though Vicki Kaushal steals everyone’s thunder in a pre-interval special appearance. Music is nothing much to discuss and comes as a break at the required times.

Overall, Dunki is a feel-good movie that starts and stays bittersweet till the interval, goes a bit dark post-interval, but regains its light touch in the last half an hour.

Script – 4 out of 5

Story – 4 out of 5

Direction – 4 out of 5

Photography – 4 out of 5

Total – 4 out of 5