All war films, when honest, are essentially anti-war films. Ikkis is another reminder of that truth. Though it recounts one of India’s most heroic wartime chapters, it is never interested in chest-thumping or spectacle for its own sake. Reality, after all, hits harder than fiction. The film traces the life and death of 2nd Lt. Arun Khetarpal, who was just 21 when he laid down his life on December 16, 1971, at the Battle of Basantar, one of the largest tank battles since World War II. Serving with the 17 Poona Horse, Arun destroyed ten Pakistani tanks before a shell ended his life. Raghavan stages these sequences with grit and restraint, placing the viewer inside the chaos rather than above it. The tank warfare, much like Pippa (2023), is detailed, immersive, and sobering.
But Ikkis finds its deepest resonance away from the battlefield. Dharmendra’s Madan Lal Khetarpal belongs to a generation shaped by Partition, men who saw displacement, loss, and fractured identities up close. Born in 1935, Dharmendra would have witnessed those horrors as a child, and that memory seems to seep into his performance. When the film shows ML Khetarpal revisiting his ancestral village of Sargodha, or walking through Lahore’s Government College, where he once studied, the moments feel less performed and more remembered. His eyes light up when he spots Dev Anand’s portrait. “My senior,” he says, with pride and nostalgia colliding in a single glance.
Raghavan peppers the narrative with quiet metaphors. A shard of eyeglass preserved inside a tree cavity, now grown around by bark, becomes a symbol of memory enduring within time. Another tree, at Basantar, marks the spot where Arun breathed his last. Dharmendra collecting soil from there is staged without melodrama, his eyes filling up in silence. It is one of the film’s most powerful moments, proof that restraint, not excess, is the true mark of maturity.
The film’s emotional core sharpens during the 2001 Lahore reunion, where Madan Lal is hosted by retired Pakistani Brigadier Khwaja Mohammad Naseer, played with haunting restraint by Jaideep Ahlawat. When Naseer finally confesses that it was his tank shell that killed Arun, the scene becomes a meeting not of enemies, but of professionals bound by the same lifelong wound. Ahlawat’s silences counter Dharmendra’s stoicism beautifully; grief passes between them without accusation. Raghavan’s refusal to vilify is an act of quiet courage.
That sensibility extends elsewhere too. A brief interaction with Deepak Dobriyal’s character, a Pakistani soldier embittered by his own wartime loss, underscores the shared cost of conflict. Dharmendra’s embrace of him feels earned, not staged. In an era addicted to jingoism, Ikkis insists on empathy.
Agastya Nanda, making his big-screen debut as Arun Khetarpal, does a credible job embodying the eagerness and idealism of an army kid raised on war stories. His arc, from youthful bravado to grim resolve, is shaped convincingly through training sequences and battlefield reality. He has given a more noteworthy performance than in his OTT debut The Archies and we hope he chooses to be a performer and not merely a star in the future. Akshay Kumar’s niece Simar Bhatia makes a confident debut as Kiran, Arun’s love interest. Sikander Kher, Rahul Dev, and Vivaan Shah provide sturdy support, grounding the military ecosystem with texture and authenticity.
For Dharmendra, Ikkis feels like life coming full circle. After decades of being underutilised in his later years, unlike contemporaries who continued to receive author-backed roles, he finally gets a part worthy of his legacy. It recalls the promise last glimpsed in Raghavan’s own Johnny Gaddaar (2007), but carries the added weight of farewell. In giving him this role, Sriram Raghavan doesn’t just direct a war drama; he offers an actor a graceful goodbye, and reminds us that the truest war stories are those that mourn what is lost rather than celebrate what is won.
Also Read: Salman Khan, Deol Family, Rekha and More Gather to Honour Dharmendra’s Final Film Ikkis
