Actors, like soldiers, like to die with their boots on. In Ikkis, director Sriram Raghavan gives Dharmendra exactly that kind of send-off, quiet, dignified, and devastating in its emotional aftermath. The film unfolds as a fond farewell to an actor whose later years were often boxed into stereotype, but who here is allowed to return, one last time, to the humane, inward-looking performer of his Bimal Roy and Hrishikesh Mukherjee days. As Brigadier Madan Lal Khetarpal, a former soldier and a grieving father, Dharmendra inhabits loss with an ease that only lived experience can bring.