Border 2 Review | Sunny Deol Works Overtime To Rescue A Film Burdened By Inheritance

Legacy is an anchor—it steadies a vessel in rough waters, yet can also burden it and limit how far it travels. Earlier this month, Dharmendra’s Ikkis (2026) arrived in theatres shortly after his passing. Weeks later, his son Sunny Deol returned to the big screen with Border 2 (2026)—a sequel to a stellar film that once recalibrated Hindi war cinema. While Deol’s dedication to Dharmendra opens on a note of homage, the film’s truer test is discovering a self not tethered to the shadow of its predecessor.

Border 2 borrows the emotional grammar of the first film, yet hesitates to disrupt the genre it revisits. The emotional architecture of the film remains traditionally masculine—soldiers depart, wives wait, mothers pray and brotherhood defies all odds. The result is a film that moves with sincerity, occasionally with force but rarely with any newness of its own. Set against the backdrop of the 1971 Indo-Pak conflict, the film focuses heavily on the bond between Nirmal Jit Singh Sekhon (Diljit Dosanjh), Hoshiar Singh Dahiya (Varun Dhawan) and Mahendra S Rawat (Ahan Shetty). Their friendship dates back to 1961 at the National War Academy, forming a tri-service bond between an airforce, naval and army officer respectively. 

Director Anurag Singh invests his first half in intimacy. Letters, training, shared meals and domestic anxieties replace immediate heroics. The soldiers are not framed as mere apparatuses of war. They’re also husbands, sons and brothers suspended between duty and tenderness. The film’s emotional credibility solely rests in this attempt. The brotherhood between Nirmal, Hoshiar and Mahendra is allowed to breathe for a considerable amount of time, decently grounding the film in a lived texture. This emphasis recalls the humanist impulses of Ikkis (2026), where soldiers were not merely deployed, but observed in a life beyond the battlefield. Border 2 is at its best when it navigates waiting for letters, worrying about unborn children and resolving small quarrels, as these details shape the first half with surprising warmth.

Yet, the film’s emotional spine remains Sunny Deol as Fateh Singh Kaler. Carrying the ethos of Border (1997) into the present, he performs more like an anchor. His signature vocal intensity survives, sharpened by Sumit Arora’s dialogues, but it still carries a quieter authority beneath the roar. Whenever Deol enters the frame, the film regains oxygen or blows wind to its sail, to keep the metaphors consistent. If Border 2 avoids mediocrity, it does so largely because Deol’s character sustains conviction across battle, reflection and restraint. The film may orbit legacy, but he embodies continuity with purpose.

While performed sincerely, the female characters function largely as subdued presence limited to being the consequence of war and an emotional anchor to the protagonists. In a narrative attentive to male interiority, the absence of equally textured female lives feels conspicuous. They’re pregnant wives, grieving partners, quiet mothers existing to motivate men, but not to inhabit independent trajectories. Sonam Bajwa (Manjit), Mona Singh (Simi), Medha Rana (Dhanvanti) and Anya Singh (Sudha) are all capable actors. Still, the writing confines them to repetitive templates. The film acknowledges their suffering but denies them agency. 

Like most patriotic cinema, Border 2 obeys genre discipline. Duty overrides doubt and orders eclipse ambiguity. The film honours Indian soldiers with reverence, yet flattens the moral geography of war. One side embodies virtue. The other arrives pre-coded as scheming and faceless. Still, small ruptures appear. Nirmal’s mother asks God to transfer her remaining years to her son, then acknowledges that enemy soldiers too have mothers who wish the same. The moment quietly humanises soldiers beyond borders. In another scene, Fateh’s character refuses to kill an unarmed Pakistani general, guided by conscience rather than trained impulse.

These gestures matter. They recognise humanity behind uniforms. Yet, they remain exceptions. While Indian soldiers receive layered emotional treatment, the opposing side stays largely symbolic. War is personalised on one front and abstracted on the other. That imbalance becomes the film’s most significant limitation. Where Ikkis (2026) allowed moral complexity to breathe, Border 2 gestures toward it, then retreats.

Visually, however, the film falters. The VFX is shabby and often invites unwanted attention to itself. Air combat sequences involving Dosanjh and naval operations with Shetty reveal synthetic textures that fracture immersion. Planes lack tactile weight or texture and the ships weren’t designed with realistic scale in mind. Ironically, Border (1997) staged combat with limited technology yet achieved greater authenticity. Border 2 arrives with superior resources, yet struggles to generate the same visceral coherence. Nostalgia becomes the film’s sonic architecture too. “Sandese Aate Hain” resurfaces alongside newer compositions like “Mitti Ke Bete.” These sequences accompany letters being read, soldiers unwinding and friendships forming. The effect is immersive but also cautious in its intent. The songs are present solely to reactivate nostalgia. In Sonu Nigam’s voice especially, the resonance deepens, yet the music often courts sentiment without extending it beyond a point. 

Curiously, one of the film’s most affecting scenes belongs to supporting characters. Paramveer Cheema (Nishaan Singh) and Vansh Bhardwaj (Santram) shine here—one soldier loses his mother. Another becomes a father. Grief and birth collide in quiet simultaneity. These moments achieve an emotional clarity the main trio gestures toward but fails to sustain.

Of course the indulgent runtime of three hours and twenty minutes is far too ambitious—Border 2 carries faint glimmers of attempted sincerity. It crafts some moments of warmth within the machinery of war. Sumit Arora and Anurag Singh’s dialogue balances conversational ease with performative lift. Yet, intent and execution never fully align. What remains is an occasionally moving sequel sustained by Deol’s gravity and a first half rich in humane detailing. It does not redefine war cinema as Border once did. It attempts to capture its nostalgia without reshaping its ethos.