The Indian film industry is one of the largest centers of commercial filmmaking in the world. It is also a far more complex place than outsiders imagine, with multiple film industries spread out across India based on different regional languages. The most prominent recent example is RRR, an Oscar-winning Telegu-language movie that belongs to South India’s Tollywood film industry.
But it is the Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry called Bollywood that has gained the most prominence outside of India over the past few decades. You might think that every Bollywood movie is an over-the-top romantic musical extravaganza, but the industry actually makes movies across a wide variety of genres. Let us take a look at some of the best Bollywood action movies with heaping doses of suspense.
10 Gupt
Gupt: The Hidden Truth is a 1997 Bollywood thriller that helped cement its rising star lead actor Bobby Deol as an A-lister. The movie sees Deol in the role of Sahil, a hot-headed and privileged young man who prefers to live a carefree life partying with his friends. Sahil finds himself falling in love with Isha, the daughter of his father’s business associate, while one of Sahil’s best friend Sheetal is also in love with him, although he only sees her as a friend.
Matters come to a head when Sahil’s step-father that he had a difficult relationship with is found murdered, and Sahil becomes the main suspect in the case. What follows is a desperate race against time by Sahil to clear his name while evading the police and trying to keep his loved ones safe. The surprise twist at the end of the movie caused a lot of controversy when the film released, and the movie made history when one of its leads Kajol became the first actress to win the Filmfare Award for best performance in a negative role.
9 Vikram Vedha
The different language-based film industries within India have very porous borders. Actors, filmmakers, and technicians from one industry frequently work in others as well. This extends to individual movie stories also, which are often remade in different languages. This is what happened with 2017’s Tamil-language thriller Vikram Vedha, which was remade in Bollywood in 2022 by the original film’s writer-director duo Pushkar-Gayathri.
The movie follows honorable cop Vikram, who is tasked with taking down the city’s most fearsome criminals along with his team. Also in the mix is Vedha, a notorious gangster from Kanpur who surprises everyone by marching into a police station and surrendering. In return for his cooperation, Vedha’s only request is that Vikram listen to three tales from his past and give an honest judgment. A cat-and-mouse chase begins between Vikram and Vedha, with the former finding his view of right and wrong slowly changing as he listens to each one of Vedha’s stories.
8 Fan
A lot of people say that stardom in Hollywood is no longer applicable to A-list actors. But such stardom is still alive and well in Bollywood. 2016’s Fan is a meta-commentary on the nature of such stardom in India, using as its lead one of the country’s biggest stars of all time, Shah Rukh Khan. The megastar pulls double-duty playing the lead and the villain of the story.
Gaurav is a middle-class boy from Dehli who is obsessed with superstar Aryan Khanna, whom Gaurav tries to emulate in every possible way. Guarav takes great trouble to travel to Mumbai to meet his idol in real life. But after causing a criminal incident to get the meeting, Gaurav is shocked when Aryan castigates him for his behavior and refuses to acknowledge their bond. Gaurav’s love turns to hatred, and he concocts an elaborate web of deceit to destroy Aryan’s life and bring the superstar down to the level of his fan.
7 A Wednesday!
Neeraj Pandey is one of the best storytellers in the thriller genre working in Bollywood. Pandey made a quiet but impactful debut with his very first movie, 2008’s A Wednesday!, which managed to become a breakout hit without a big budget or prominent stars thanks to Pandey’s skillful work as a writer and director, and the commanding performances of the lead cast.
On an ordinary day in Mumbai, the police is alerted to the presences of a bag containing explosives in a public place. After disposing of the bag, the police are contacted by an unnamed person who takes responsibility for planting the bomb. The mystery man also reveals that he has hidden other explosives all over the city, which will explode in a few hours unless the police releases four convicted terrorists. As the officers reluctantly comply, the true nature of the unnamed man’s mission is revealed for an explosive climax.
6 Khiladi
Akshay Kumar is known in Bollywood today as a comedy and drama star. But the actor got his start as India’s first modern action hero who inculcated martial arts fight scenes in his movies. Kumar’s breakout role was playing the lead in 1992’s Khiladi, which took the typical Bollywood romance setting and turned it into a murder-mystery action thriller to take advantage of Kumar’s unique set of skills.
Raj and his group of friends in college are an irresponsible lot who are only interested in having fun and playing pranks. Raj is also a compulsive gambler who loves taking risks in life. One day Raj takes a bet that he can make his wealthy friend Sheetal’s father believe she has been kidnapped and get money from him. The deception turns deadly when Sheetal gets actually murdered, and Raj and his friends become the prime suspects in the case, forcing them to go on the run to find the real culprit and clear their names.
5 War
Just like Hollywood, Bollywood has also realized the money-making possibilities of a cinematic universe. The most prominent example of such a franchise in Bollywood currently is Yash Raj Studios’ Spyverse, which takes popular actors and places them in a shared setting whose tone ranges from James Bond-style capers to Fast & Furious-inspired adventures.
One of the earliest additions to the Spyverse was War, featring the two biggest action stars of the time, Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff in the lead roles as Kabir and Khalid. The duo play the parts of army officers who are tasked with stopping an international terrorist from wreaking havoc across India. In the aftermath of a string of hits against army personnel, Kabir is revealed to have started working against the Indian state. But Khalid suspects there is a deeper game afoot, and he volunteers to embark on a solo mission to bring his former mentor to justice.
4 Mardaani 2
Indian Police Officer (IPS) Shivani Shivaji Roy was first introduced in 2014’s Mardaani as a lone female officer waging a war against Mumbai’s criminal underworld. Shivani gets her second case in Mardaani 2, which ups the ante with a more diabolical villain and an action-packed storyline. This time Shivani is dealing with a string of brutal murders of young women in Kota, Rajasthan.
The conservative town is scandalized by the crimes, and Shivani suspects a mentally ill serial killer is behind the murders. When it is announced that Shivani will be heading the investigation into the killings, the murderer starts to take an interest in her. Between taunting Shivani by breaking into her house and finding more victims, the killer always appears to be one step ahead of the police as Shivani works frantically to bring the carnage to an end.
3 Race
What if the Fast & Furious movies were like an extended Indian soap opera? That is the question filmmaking duo Abbas-Mastan dared to ask in 2008, and the result was the movie Race. Ranvir is a successful businessman and ranch owner who always wins every gamble he undertakes. Ranvir also has a younger brother Rajiv, and a girlfriend named Sonia.
Ranvir loves his brother so much that when he learns that Rajiv is in love with Sonia, he steps aside to allow Rajiv to woo and get engaged to Sonia. But the happy family dynamic is shattered when an attempt is made on Ranvir’s life. Caught in a race against time, Ranvir, Rajiv, and Sonia must uncover the secret behind the murder attempt, even as various skeletons come tumbling out of the family closet and threaten to shatter their world.
2 Kahani
In the city of Kolkata, a heavily-pregnant woman named Vidya Bagchi arrives from the UK to track down her missing husband. The only problem is there is no official record of anyone matching the description of Vidya’s husband who was in Kolkata recently. Blocked at every turn by the local police, Vidya is forced to perform her own investigations in secret in Kahani.
As she follows one lead after another, deadly forces start converging around Vidya. Like Bob Biswas, a meek-looking middle-aged man who moonlights as a contract killer for unnamed parties. Despite repeated signs that her life is in great danger, Vidya forges ahead with her inquiries, in the process uncovering a startling conspiracy at the heart of the city.
1 Ghajini
Picture this. A guy with short-term memory loss is unable to remember anything that happened 15 minutes prior. To aid in his search for his lover’s killer, the man uses information supplied by tattoos covering his entire body, and also a notebook where he keeps important clues he has unearthed as well as photos of locations and suspects.
That was the basic premise of Christopher Nolan’s cult-hit 2000 movie Memento. The premise was then directly lifted by Indian filmmaker A.R. Murugadoss for his Tamil-language movie Ghajini. Murugadoss later remade his own movie in Hindi in 2008. Both versions of Ghajini feature much more action and brutality than Memento, as well as a bigger part of the story being devoted to the love interest of the male lead to explain the deep loss he feels after her demise.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
