Once leading men, Akshaye Khanna, Bobby Deol, and Sanjay Dutt faded with time. Their powerful resurgence as villains proves abandoning herohood was not decline, but a long-overdue creative correction.

For years, Bobby Deol was treated as the quiet presence of Bollywood. People remembered the early charm of Barsaat and Soldier, the soft romantic heartthrob who once ruled the nineties, but somewhere ...