The Bads of Bollywood

Hindi cinema is discovering that the fastest way to stay relevant isn't to play the hero-but to risk becoming the villain

- By PUJA TALWAR

Hindi cinema has discovered a ruthless truth: nothing resurrects a career quite like becoming the villain.

For actors slipping out of the spotlight—or never fully owning it—the antagonist has become a second, sharper debut. Not the moustache-twirling tyrant of old, but a figure of control, silence, and calibrated violence. In this new grammar of menace, power is not declared; it is assumed. And no one embodies this shift more precisely than Akshaye Khanna.

Khanna never reached the unassailable stardom of his father, Vinod Khanna. His career was marked by critical respect, interrupted momentum, and long silences. For years, he existed on the margins of the mainstream-recognisable, admired, but rarely central. Playing the villain has changed that equation entirely. Today, among younger moviegoers, Khanna is no longer remembered for what he missed; he is feared for what he controls.

In Dhurandhar, Khanna’s antagonist does not announce himself with dialogue. He arrives through rhythm. The now-iconic walk—slow, unhurried, almost luxuriant—syncs with the FAQLA track. When he kills, there is no warning, no verbal threat. Guns rise, bodies fall, and the scene ends. The violence feels administrative, as if decided long before the camera arrived. It is this absence of performanc that lodges him in memory.

That authority gave its first look in Chhaava, where brutality sheds modern efficiency and takes on feudal weight. Here, Khanna’s violence is slower, closer, meant to humiliate as much as harm. Blades linger. Punishments are public. If Dhurandhar represents globalised power—swift and transactional—Chhaava stages cruelty as spectacle and warning. In both, Khanna’s control never wavers. Silence does the damage before the weapon.