Sometimes you can just look at a character in a movie and see that they're doomed. In Main Khiladi Tu Anari (1994), that character is Arjun Joglekar (Mukesh Khanna, who will always be Shaktimaan to me.) Arjun is an incorruptible supercop and thorn in the side of drug kingpin Goli (Shakti Kapoor.) He's also a devoted family man, with a wife (Beena Banerjee) that he just learned is pregnant, and a spunky younger sister, Shivangi (Raageshwari). And of course he's in a big budget Bollywood movie, but played by an actor who is mostly known for his television work. He's doomed.
Goli asks bar dancer Mona (Shilpa Shetty) to lure Arjun to her apartment and offer him a bribe. She does, and Arjun refuses the money and delivers a lecture about honor and duty which, to be fair, is exactly what Shaktimaan would do. And then Goli and his henchmen walk in the door and kill him. Traditionally, the actual hero (usually another cop) enters the movie at this point, vows to take care of his fallen comrade's family, and spends the rest of the movie seeking justice and maybe finding love in his spare time. And that's exactly what happens here.
Said actual hero is Arjun and Shivagi's brother Karan (Akshay Kumar), who is also an incorruptible supercop, but he's played by a film actor so he's probably safe. Karan quickly convinces Mona to testify against Goli, but before that can happen Goli uses a helicopter to sneak up on them and shoots her dead. And even though Karan saw the whole thing, Goli is too powerful and connected to be charged with a crime without hard evidence. (The testimony of a police officer who witnessed everything directly isn't enough.)
While he waits for another chance to take down Goli, Karan busies himself with actual police work, and by actual police work I mean he hears about a corrupt and mob-connected film producer assaulting aspiring actresses, so he goes to the man's office and beats him to a bloody pulp. Film star Deepak Kumar (Saif Ali Khan) happens to be there to see the beating, and he thinks that Karan is so incredibly cool that he must play him in a movie. Deepak makes arrangements to shadow a reluctant Kumar in order to research the character.
Meanwhile, Kumar stumbles across Basanti (also Shilpa Shetty), a street performer who happens to look exactly like Mona. Suddenly Deepak is useful! Deepak trains Basanti to impersonate Mona, then they install her in Mona's old job and apartment so that she can spy on Goli's organization.
(Side note - Basanti is very obviously based on Hema Malini's performance as Geeta in the long lost twin drama Seeta Aur Geeta; she dresses like Geeta, speaks like Geeta, and even even threatens to demolish a police station like Geeta. However, she's named after Malini's character in Sholay.)
And while Basanti is risking her life in the figurative lion's den, Karana nd Deepak . . . mostly muck about and engage in buddy comedy hijinks. There's a lot of bickering, and each man has his own deeply problematic romantic arc. Shivangi is a Deepak Kumar fan, but they only realize how big a fan she is when she cuts herself badly while trying to carve his name into her hand. Apparently this level of extreme devotion is just what Deepak is looking for in a woman, because before long they're talking about marriage. Karan is an obstacle, but Deepak tries to deal with the problem by tricking Karan into falling in love with Basanti, a plan which revolves around getting Karan drunk and then, in the morning, convincing him that he had taken advantage of Basanti. It's . . . it's not good. Shaktimaan would not approve.
Dysfunctional courtship is kind of a hallmark of mid nineties Bollywood, and, as usual, once the respective relationships are established with their respective dance numbers, the characters start acting like relatively reasonable people again. It does take a little while to get there, though.
Icky romance isn't the only nineties trope on display here. The plot is lifted from an American movie that I haven't seen (The Hard Way), the film meanders from genre to genre, there's a board meeting of international criminals, Goli has a right hand man with a distinctive look and a stupid haircut, and Johny Lever, Kader Khan, and Shakti Kapoor all have significant roles. (Much to my surprise, Shakti Kapoor isn't terrible here.) It's like a microcosm of the Bollywood of nthe era; mostly big dumb fun, but there are elements that have not aged well at all.
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