Critical reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 10 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.2/10.
Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV gave 3.5 stars out of 5 and said that "Not the sort of Bollywood war movie that goes all guns blazing and tom-tomming the virtues of battlefield bellicosity, Ikkis conserves its firepower and spreads it out judiciously over its two-and-a-half-hour runtime."
Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express rated it 3/5 stars and writes in her review that "Agastya Nanda-Dharmendra-starrer is a war film that makes you feel in a way that movies these days are not either able to or want to. It eschews gratuitous violence and jingoism as it explores the harrowing fallout of conflict."
Rahul Desai of The Hollywood Reporter India commented that "The first Hindi film of 2026 excels as both a patriotic war drama and a poignant anti-war epic. ... Come for the heroism, stay for the hugs."
Mayur Sanap of Rediff.com rated it 3.5 stars out of 5 and observed that "Where Dhurandhar leaned into aggressive bloodlust through its acerbic storytelling, Ikkis moves in the opposite direction, asking us to see people beyond uniforms, slogans, or sides."
Rishabh Suri of Hindustan Times also gave 3.5 stars out of 5 and stated that "Overall, Ikkis works best when it stops trying to be a war film and becomes a painful reminder. It tells you something unbearable: that our freedoms were bought by people who never got to live theirs."
Anuj Kumar of The Hindu said that "Ikkis succeeds as a thoughtful, tear-jerking homage to a young warrior that values soul over spectacle."
Nandini Ramnath of Scroll.in writes that "Ikkis sidesteps the vengeance-fuelled hyperbole that results when Indians run into Pakistanis. Scene after scene reveals Raghavan’s efforts to put his own stamp on a genre that has been lost to jingoism."
A critic of Bollywood Hungama gave 4 stars out of 5 and said that "Ikkis is not just a war film. It is a deeply human story about courage, sacrifice and reconciliation".
Lachmi Deb Roy of Firstpost also rated 4/5 stars and said that "Ikkis is just the kind of war-drama we need in this ruptured mainstream cinema scenario."
Devesh Sharma of Filmfare also rated 4/5 stars and said that "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."
Uday Bhatia of Mint praise the film saying that "In an increasingly belligerent and hysterical Hindi cinema, I’m not sure there'll be takers for Ikkis' pacifism. Those who watch it for the director might be surprised. There was a lot of talk when the trailer released about how this didn't seem like a Raghavan film, which is to say something acidic, smart and self-aware. It's true that sweet, sincere Ikkis is tonally apart from anything he's made."
Renuka Vyavahare of The Times of India gave 3.5 stars and said that "Unlike most war films, Ikkis doesn’t glorify conflict; it strives for realism. There’s no heavy reliance on CGI or dramatic sound design, which largely works in the film’s favour. However, the music is underwhelming and does little to elevate the narrative or emotional beats."
