Safari
Synopsis:
Picture this, about midway through Safari, Sanjay Dutt is just standing there looking super intense while wearing this wildly shiny, bright blue leather jacket that honestly looks like it was salvaged from a discount store rack in 1999, and he’s glaring at someone across a dusty warehouse because that is just the kind of movie we are dealing with here. But to really understand why he’s rocking that bizarre outerwear, you have to back up to the very beginning of the whole mess, which honestly fits right in with a lot of those classic 90s bollywood movies that didn't take themselves too seriously yet still tried to pack in all the emotional melodrama possible. The story kicks off with Juhi Chawla looking gorgeous as always, playing this sweet woman who’s just trying to live her life and mind her own business, and then Sanjay shows up and he's brooding all over the place, and look, you know how these hindi movies go once the main couple crosses paths because trouble isn't far behind. So then we find out that Sanjay's character has a serious bone to pick with the local underworld boss, and there's this weird subplot involving a stolen briefcase that takes up way too much screen time for reasons nobody can quite explain, and honestly, I couldn't even tell you what was actually inside that briefcase because the camera just lingers on the silver latch for what feels like ten straight minutes before cutting to a completely unrelated song sequence on a beach. That's just how they rolled back then. You get high-intensity revenge plots mixed with random dance numbers where the background dancers are wearing neon shorts and oversized visors, and honestly, Juhi Chawla sells every single frame of it even when the script is falling apart at the seams. Anyway, things get complicated when a guy named Captain Saab enters the picture, played by none other than Jackie Shroff, and he's got this whole mysterious military-style background that makes you wonder if he's a good guy or a total scammer, and spoiler alert, it's a bit of both because he's running around trying to fix things while also making everything a hundred times worse. The funny thing is, nobody in this movie ever just talks things out like normal humans, they always have to yell their feelings across crowded rooms or while holding a prop gun that looks suspiciously plastic. So Captain Saab and Sanjay's character end up locked in this weird rivalry over Juhi's affection, and right after that chaotic confrontation, they're suddenly teaming up to take down the actual bad guys, and you're just sitting there blinking at the screen wondering how the alignment shifted so fast. Boom. Total chaos.
So then the plot accelerates into overdrive and they're running through caves and jumping over fake boulders while explosions go off behind them that look like someone set off a bunch of firecrackers inside a trash can. You've got all these twists about hidden identities and past betrayals that don't make logical sense if you think about them for more than two seconds, but who cares because Sanjay Dutt is firing a submachine gun from the hip while wearing sunglasses at night. The action scenes in these old hindi films are pure magic just because of how utterly unhinged they are, and Safari definitely doesn't disappoint in the department of over-the-top ridiculousness. Juhi gets kidnapped of course, because what is a 90s thriller without the leading lady getting tied to a chair in an abandoned industrial facility while the main character races against the clock. So Sanjay and Jackie have to put their petty differences aside and storm the compound, and they do this by driving a jeep straight through a brick wall, which is a choice that defies every law of physics and common sense. They're trading cheesy one-liners back and forth, and somebody actually shouts, get ready to meet your maker, right before a massive brawl breaks out in the middle of a room filled with hanging chains and blinking strobe lights. Fists are flying, stunt doubles are getting tossed around like ragdolls, and Jackie Shroff gets hit with a wooden pallet that clearly bounces off his shoulder before he even hits the ground. It's glorious. They finally manage to secure the perimeter and free Juhi, but the main villain isn't done yet because he pulls out a detonator and starts laughing maniacally like every cartoon bad guy ever invented. There's a breathless struggle over the remote control, and Sanjay headbutts the guy so hard that you can practically hear the fake crunch sound effect echoing through your living room speakers. They walk out of the burning building in slow motion as the flames lick the night sky, and Juhi runs into Sanjay's arms while the dramatic theme music swells to a deafening crescendo right before the screen abruptly cuts to black.
Juhi Chawla's hair in the first twenty minutes of Safari has a life independent of the plot, bouncing around with a stubborn resistance to humidity that belongs in a shampoo commercial rather than a gritty crime thriller. If I'm honest, that kind of distraction is half the fun of digging through older Bollywood movies from the late nineties when gloss started colliding with desperation on a budget.
Director Ashwin Varde or whoever was actually steering the ship on any given day treats pacing like a suggestion rather than a rule, letting scenes stretch until the tension dissolves into polite confusion. The screenplay lurches forward in fits and starts, abandoning entire character motivations for twenty-minute stretches only to bring them back when a fight scene needs an excuse to happen. It is messy in the way a lot of nineties Hindi films are messy, stitched together from scraps of better gangster dramas like Kaante and whatever foreign action tapes the editor watched over the weekend. You can feel the sweat coming off the crew as they try to turn a half-baked revenge arc into something resembling an emotional journey, but the mechanics keep jamming.
Sanjay Dutt walks through the carnage with that specific heavy-lidded exhaustion he perfected right around that era, playing a man whose anger feels less like a fire and more like an old engine that simply refuses to stop smoking. When he stares down a henchman in a dusty godown, you buy the danger entirely, even if the dialogue he has to deliver sounds like it was written on the back of a cigarette packet five minutes before the cameras rolled. He doesn't stretch himself here because he doesn't need to, relying on the sheer physical weight of his presence to anchor scenes that would otherwise float away into pure silliness. Juhi Chawla works just as hard with considerably less to do, tasked mostly with looking worried in doorways and occasionally yelling at men who are making catastrophically poor life choices.
The background score relies heavily on an electric guitar patch that sounds suspiciously like a stock preset on a Casio keyboard, looping endlessly during every single chase through the docks. It is a small thing, but that exact three-note riff repeats so often during a ten-minute foot chase that I started hearing it in my teeth. Cinematographer Ishwar Bidri frames Mumbai with a jaundiced yellow filter that was mandatory for every urban thriller made after 1998, turning the streets into a sickly soup of mustard light and deep shadows where nobody ever seems to sweat naturally. Sometimes the camera lingers on a reaction shot a beat too long, catching an extra blinking in the background or a prop master hurriedly stepping out of frame.
Beneath the genre machinery, the story tries to grapple with loyalty and the cost of vengeance in a world that has already broken its own rules, though it rarely pauses long enough for those ideas to leave a bruise. Hindi cinema has always wrestled with the archetype of the fallen brother, and Dutt fits that mold like a glove that has lost its lining, worn down by use and exposure. The villains are loud, the cops are tired, and the women are either saints or victims with very few options left on the board.
There is no grand revelation waiting at the end of this road, just a messy shootout in a gravel pit that resolves the plot without earning any of the emotion it tries to cash in on. It is not great, not bad, just there, occupying a comfortable slot in the middle shelves of video rental history where movies go to be forgotten until some insomniac stumbles across them on a Tuesday night.