Long before Rehman Dakait made the Internet swoon, Akshaye Khanna had already mastered the art of stealing the show from the dark side.
Key Points
- With Akshaye Khanna donning yet another negative role in Ikka, we look back at his most memorable villain roles over the years.
- From charming conmen to ruthless emperors and feared ganglords, Akshaye has built one of Bollywood’s most versatile villain filmographies.
- The list traces his evolution from Humraaz to the Internet-favourite Rehman Dakait in Dhurandhar, highlighting why he remains one of Hindi cinema’s finest scene-stealers.
Akshaye Khanna reunites with Sunny Deol after 29 years since Border (1997) in the Netflix film Ikka, a courtroom drama directed by Siddharth P Malhotra. The film sees Sunny Deol play an upright lawyer forced to defend a rich criminal portrayed by Akshaye Khanna. Which means that, after his last Hindi film, Dhurandhar, Khanna will once again be seen in a character with grey shades.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you couldn’t have missed the cult fandom Akshaye has been enjoying for his portrayal of Pakistani ganglord Rehman Dakait in Dhurandhar, so much so that netizens had been aura-farming him more than the film’s actual lead, Ranveer Singh.
While he began his career as the quintessential chocolate-boy hero before moving into comedy with Priyadarshan’s films and then to more performance-oriented roles, Akshaye has also been impressing audiences with his darker roles long before Dhurandhar.
Sreeju Sudhakaran looks back at Akshaye Khanna’s negative roles and ranks them from the least menacing to the most.
7. Dishoom (2016)
Where To Watch: Eros Now and JioHotstar
Rohit Dhawan’s action comedy sees Khanna play a cricket bookie who masterminds the kidnapping of India’s biggest cricketer ahead of a crucial India-Pakistan match.
While he brings his trademark suave menace to the role, the character doesn’t leave him much room to expand as an actor in a film that’s more interested in the buddy-comedy antics of its leading men, John Abraham and Varun Dhawan.
The role had promise because Khanna was cast in it, but just became an unmemorable character who gets an insulting exit.
6. Sab Kushal Mangal (2020)
Where To Watch: Eros Now
In this romantic comedy, Akshaye Khanna is both the protagonist and the antagonist in a sense.
He plays a middle-aged politician who falls for a much younger woman (played by Ravi Kishan’s daughter and current Alliance contestant Riva Kishan), and competes with a local content creator (portrayed by Padmini Kolhapure’s son Priyaank Sharma) for her attention.
This is the only light-hearted role on this list and while the film itself is quite forgettable, Akshaye’s buffoonish villain act is easily its best aspect.
5. Race (2008)
Where To Watch: Not Available for Streaming
Akshaye Khanna is terrific in Abbas-Mustan’s stylish thriller as a man who hates his stepbrother so much that he devises an elaborate plan to kill him and inherit his fortune. The problem is, once you stop to think about it, the plan itself is hilariously and absurdly convoluted.
Akshaye delivers a wonderfully slimy performance, but the writing never quite supports that sliminess to feel more smart or intelligent. He has just an evil scheme that comes with plenty of twists because the screenplay wants those to happen.
4. Drishyam 2 (2022)
Where To Watch: Prime Video and MX Player
In all honesty, while I should be okay with the Hindi remake trying to do something different from the original, I was disappointed that it meant altering one of the finest aspects of the Malayalam film.
Murali Gopy’s IG Sebastian might have been an antagonist to Mohanlal’s Georgekutty, but he remained an honest officer simply trying to solve a murder without resorting to third-degree methods.
Akshaye’s IG Tarun Ahlawat is almost the opposite. He has no qualms about his people physically torturing the protagonist’s family or him intimidating a woman in her own home when her husband isn’t around.
Yet, in this soulless remake, Akshaye’s performance is ironically the film’s biggest strength. Despite the character’s flaws, his cool, quietly menacing act remains immensely watchable. Sadly for his fans, he isn’t returning for the threequel.
3. Dhurandhar (2025)
Where To Watch: JioHotstar and Netflix
IMHO, Akshaye Khanna shines even more in the countless reel edits than in the film itself. Not that he is bad in the movie.
Much of Rehman Dakait’s impact comes from Aditya Dhar’s staging, beginning with that superb hospital introduction that instantly tells you this is not a man to be messed with.
The problem is that he keeps getting messed with. Dutt’s SP Aslam arrests him, forcing Hamza to bail him out. Major Iqbal gradually reduces him from an independent ganglord to a pawn in a larger terrorist network. And then, of course, the fact that Hamza had been playing him all along before Rehman finally sees the truth, thanks to a detour.
Akshaye can give some excellent evil smirks and the film frames him like an absolute aura machine, but he is never completely in control of his own situation. That’s where the character loses a few points.
2. Humraaz (2002)
Where To Watch: Prime Video, JioHotstar and MX Player
Akshaye Khanna’s first negative role unsurprisingly came in an Abbas-Mustan film, a director duo with a knack for turning leading stars into memorable villains, whether it was Shah Rukh Khan in Baazigar, Akshay Kumar in Ajnabee, or Priyanka Chopra in Aitraaz.
Unlike their later collaboration Race, Akshaye’s Karan Malhotra feels far more convincingly written. He is an opportunistic conman who uses his girlfriend to trap a wealthy businessman. Wait a minute… didn’t Abbas-Mustan essentially recycle the same blueprint for Race? Well, the original idea was better.
Even after his plan unravels because he never expected his girlfriend to genuinely fall in love with her husband, Karan keeps improvising, cleverly turning the tables once the husband uncovers the truth.
Akshaye is deliciously smarmy throughout, right until the climax reduces him to yet another clichéd villain arriving with a gang of henchmen.
1. Chhaava (2025)
Where To Watch: Netflix
Chhaava can certainly be accused of pandering to right-wing sentiments through its one-sided depiction of historical events, but there is also little denying that Aurangzeb was a ruthless ruler.
Akshaye Khanna, almost unrecognisable beneath layers of ageing makeup, is superb as the emperor whose cruelty has only intensified with time as he becomes determined to crush the young Maratha king, Sambhaji Maharaj.
Whether it’s his restrained body language or the venom that seeps through every carefully chosen line of dialogue, Akshaye radiates menace in every scene.
What’s even more disturbing than his performance, however, is seeing sections of the audience use that portrayal as an excuse to spew hatred towards an entire community.
Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff
