Khuda Haafiz Film Overview: Vidyut Jammwal Slows Down To Match The Drift Of This Thriller

Solid: Vidyut Jammwal, Shivaleeka Oberoi, Aahana Kumra, Annu Kapoor, Shiv Pandit

Director: Faruk Kabir

Ranking: 2.5 Stars (Out Of 5)

Vidyut Jammwal sheds his Commando pores and skin and assumes the guise of an peculiar man confronted with a unprecedented disaster. However, pitted towards human traffickers in a fictional Arab nation, he nonetheless has to do loads of huffing and puffing in Khuda Haafiz. Within the means of drawing blood and breaking bones, he, in marked departure from previous follow, has to reckon with self-doubt, confusion and blowbacks.

The motion star slows down perceptibly to match the drift of the thriller written and directed by Faruk Kabir. However the movie itself is much too beset with plot contrivances to have the ability to lend the protagonist’s mission the requisite intrigue and depth.

Curiously, the harried protagonist implores and inquires moderately than calls for and asserts till at the very least an hour into the 134-minute movie. His spouse has gone lacking in an alien land the place risks lurks at each flip. There isn’t a approach he can mount a rescue operation with out energetic assistance on the bottom from absolute strangers.

Conveniently, everybody he encounters within the Sultanate of Noman breaks into Hindi or a smattering of English. So, he’s not often perplexed and his entreaties don’t go unheeded. Nevertheless, fearful stiff and quick working out of endurance, he says to an Indian embassy official: “Mujhe meri Nargis chahiye bas, phir most important waapas chala jaoonga.” However that, as he can fathom for himself, is simpler stated than finished.

Apart from presenting a ‘new’ Vidyut Jammwal, Khuda Haafiz, streaming on Disney + Hotstar, offers a number of Bollywood shibboleths a large berth even because it proffers a fully customary storyline. It pits an out-of-work Lucknow software program engineer towards a vile gang that has kidnapped his spouse and pushed her into the flesh commerce.

Sameer Chaudhary (Jammwal) is a lad steeped in old-world tehzeeb. He marries the woman his dad and mom select for him – Nargis Rajput (Shivaleeka Oberoi), daughter of a Hindu-Muslim couple who’ve finished a flawless job of elevating their daughter in their very own picture: impartial and assured and but no dyed within the wool insurgent tilting towards societal and parental impositions.

No sooner do Nargis and Sameer wed than they lose their jobs as a consequence of the 2008 world recession. They’re compelled to search for employment overseas. The allusion to a monetary disaster of over a decade in the past – the interval permits the blame to be pinned on a secure goal – is noteworthy contemplating that India has been in the midst of a slowdown for nearly 4 years now. Would not the misfortune that befalls the newly married couple in Khuda Haafiz have made simply as a lot sense had the story been set nearer to the current occasions?

The traffickers listed below are all Arab males who communicate with ludicrously fluctuating accents, however the movie doesn’t peddle Islamophobic sentiments of the sort that Bollywood so simply falls prey to nowadays. On touchdown within the Sultanate of Noman, Sameer finds a dedicated ally in a Pathan cabbie Usmaan (Annu Kapoor).

Neither is that every one. He receives assist from a Pakistani comfort retailer proprietor, will get a helpful lead from a Bangladeshi worker of a telecom firm and ultimately groups up with two native law enforcement officials, Faiz Abu Malik (Shiv Pandit) and Tamena Hamid (Aahana Kumra).

A handful of huge twists – a grisly dying, a welcome resurrection and a grievous betrayal – are reserved for the final quarter of the movie however however the purple herrings strewn throughout Sameer’s path, you may, from miles away, see the form of the denouement that’s coming.

Had this been a Commando or a Baaghi, Sameer Chaudhary would have flown right into a murderous rage on receiving an SOS from his sobbing spouse. Right here, he panics. A hapless hunk is not the norm in a Bollywood thriller, positively not when Jammwal is on the coronary heart of it, however the movie does handle to a sure extent to make the person’s plight convincing sufficient to hold a number of of his determined subsequent acts on. However just a few.

Khuda Haafiz, just like the hero, flails about with intent, however is at all times a strictly middling affair by which the one focal point is a lead actor straining on the leash to flex his muscular tissues and never being allowed to go all out to show how combating match he precisely is.

In reality, the motion sequences and stunts within the movie, shot in Tashkent and different components of Uzbekistan, are extra freestyle and frenetic than quick and fantastical. There’s nothing within the plot to counsel that the hero was born with combined martial arts-level fight abilities, however in the case of going after the dangerous guys his tough and prepared methods work simply high quality.

However that is not excellent news for Khuda Haafiz, the tough and prepared strategies we imply. They flip the movie into an arbitrary, contrived actioner too fixated on the hero to fret about creating the villains into rounded characters who can exude real menace and provides him a run for his cash. He does do plenty of working all proper and finds himself being chased in conditions that threaten life and limb. Predictably, he by no means fails to come back out in a single piece, give or take a bruise or two.

The actors taking part in the Arab characters – Shiv Pandit specifically – are erratic with their dialogue supply. Regardless of the occasional diction-related slip-ups, Aahana Kumra offers a great account of herself. Shivaleeka Oberoi is finished in by an underwritten function. Annu Kapoor, who will get a lion’s share of the footage apportioned to the supporting forged, makes it rely.

Vidyut Jammwal is not his common electrifying self. The movie has no scope for the dazzling self-performed stunts that he has constructed his profession round. You possibly can sense that he’s making an effort to carry on to the sedate physique language that the function requires however, to his credit score, he doesn’t let that battle overly undermine the efficiency.

The spirit of this movie, for no matter it’s price, is finest exemplified by the hero wishing a buddy Khuda Haafiz along with his palms folded to indicate a namaste. That alone would have set Khuda Haafiz aside if solely it had been a greater movie.