Khuda Haafiz Released | Amazon Prime

Khuda Haafiz is a 2020 Indian Hindi-language action thriller film written and directed by Faruk Kabir and produced by Kumar Mangat Pathak and Abhishek Pathak under Panorama Studios. It stars Vidyut Jammwal and Shivaleeka Oberoi, with Annu Kapoor, Aahana Kumra, and Shiv Pandit in supporting roles. 

Khuda Haafiz Review: In the opening sequence, a coy Sameer asks Nargis if she had agreed to marry him because of family pressure and if she had a boyfriend that she still has unresolved feelings for. This Lucknow boy’s naivety appeals to Nargis. And before you know it, the duo enters into holy matrimony and is drunk in love within days of saying ‘Qubool Hai (I accept it)’ to one another. In a different setting, writers Faruk Kabir (also the director) and Zaheer Abbas Qureshi portray the sudden crashing of the world economy and how India grapples under its shockwaves. Needless to say, the lead pair too faces the brunt and both lose their jobs within months of tying the knot.

Desperate, the couple applies for work to foreign countries like the Sultanate of Noman through a sketchy job placement agency in Lucknow. While Narigis’s work visa arrives, Sameer has to wait for five more days. But all’s not well in the Noman paradise as Nargis makes a panic phone call to her husband, claiming “nothing’s what it seemed to be” and that “she is being treated badly”. Something sinister is at play and Sameer knows it and leaves home with the sole mission of bringing his wife back. Upon reaching, he is confronted with the harsh reality of his circumstances—Nargis is now in the clutches of the dark alleys of flesh trade. How is he going to save her, and most importantly, where is she?

As the name suggests, ‘Khuda Hafiz’ is the tale of a man’s love and longing for his beloved who’s faced with an adverse situation in an alien world. True, when laid out in black and white, the screenplay shows immense potential and could have very well been a game-changer in the intense romance-thriller saga. But it’s not. Because of the element of thrill and fear of the unknown, the first half of the film is somewhat engaging and for the first half-an-hour or so, you would want to know what’s in store for these lovebirds. But that initial curiosity is soon butchered by wishy-washy storytelling and a script that acquiesces to the fail-safe techniques typically administered in hit crime-thriller love rigmarole.