Bollywood's love affair with the car chase, decoded

For decades, the sight of a car hurtling between trucks, swinging past a jeep, or skimming across a railway platform has signalled peak entertainment in Hindi cinema. The humble chase scene has travelled from jammed Mumbai roads and practical stunt rigs to motion-captured rigs and thousands of rendered frames. What began with daredevils strapped to bonnets has become a high-budget, technology-led showpiece with global benchmarks to match.

In Australia, where diaspora audiences regularly pack suburban multiplexes for the latest Yash Raj or Dharma release, these set-pieces now land with Hollywood-level gloss. From a Gold Class screening at Event Cinemas George Street in Sydney to a packed Saturday night at HOYTS Chadstone, fans down under are watching the same chase sequences that get debated online within hours of release.

Real wheels, real risk: the stuntmen era

The earliest Bollywood car chases were essentially extended stunt performances with minimal cuts. Sequences in films like "Coolie" (1983) and "Agneepath" (1990) relied on trained crews piloting cars at speed on Mumbai's Bandra-Worli road or along the old Pune expressway. Safety equipment was rudimentary by today's standards, and the storytelling value came from the obvious human risk.

Stunt director Veeru Devgan, father of Ajay Devgn, became a fixture of this era. His work on "Phool Aur Kaante" (1991) and "Jigar" (1992) showcased the signature two-wheeler split that later became his calling card, executed on a real bike with no safety net. Car work followed the same ethos: no green screens, no air bags for cameras, just good driving and a tight camera car.

Choreography was loose, but the energy was unmistakable. The chase was less about technical precision and more about visceral thrill, a quality Australian audiences tuned in for when VHS cassettes made the rounds through migrant community video libraries in suburbs like Parramatta and Footscray.

The Abbas-Mustan blueprint

By the mid-1990s, Abbas-Mustan had turned the chase into a formula. Their "Baazigar" (1993), "Daraar" (1996) and later "Ajnabee" (2001) featured car sequences that hit predictable beats: villain pursues hero, hero swerves through traffic, a train appears at the last second. The directors leaned on tightly edited practical stunts, often shot on the Mumbai-Pune corridor.

This formula spread. Action choreographers like Tinnu Anand and the Allan Amin workshop standardised the gear-shifting, mirror-checking close-ups that audiences associated with "Indian" thrillers. The chase was no longer just a set-piece; it was shorthand for danger, often used in lieu of genuine emotional stakes.

Australian viewers caught much of this era through late-night SBS broadcasts and the early days of Foxtel's World Movies channel. The predictability did not bother anyone. Fans knew exactly when the hero would glance at the rear-view mirror, and that familiarity was part of the charm.

Hollywood crossover and the 2000s shift

The 2000s brought international co-productions and a fresh appetite for spectacle. "Dhoom" (2004) and "Dhoom 2" (2006) introduced motorcycle and car choreography that felt closer to "Mission: Impossible" than vintage Bollywood. The franchise's chase sequences, often filmed across South Africa's Cape Town and Durban, showed what a bigger cheque could buy.

Indian stunt crews trained with international experts during this period, including riggers who had cut their teeth at the Gold Coast's Village Roadshow Studios. Some of that crew crossover is still visible in modern YRF Action films, where precision driving borrows heavily from Australian and Hollywood playbooks.

Stunt schools like the Benny Douglas Action Academy in Mumbai trained a generation of performers fluent in both practical falls and wire work. Their graduates now populate chase sequences across the industry, working alongside Hollywood veterans on the biggest productions.

The YRF action universe

No conversation about modern Bollywood car chases is complete without the Yash Raj Films Action Universe. "Ek Tha Tiger" (2012), "Bang Bang!" (2014), "Tiger Zinda Hai" (2017), "War" (2019) and "Pathaan" (2023) collectively redefined what an Indian action set-piece could look like, with "Fighter" (2024) pushing the envelope further still.

Director Siddharth Anand has been the through-line. His sequences blend real driving with computer-generated enhancements, where only the broad strokes happen on location and the close-quarters chaos is augmented frame by frame. The "Pathaan" truck sequence, shot partially in Abu Dhabi, used around 800 VFX shots for a single four-minute scene.

Australian fans have driven this growth. Diaspora turnout for "Pathaan" at cinemas including Event Cinemas Brisbane Myer Centre was strong enough to extend the film's run beyond the typical two-week Bollywood window. Local distributors like Mind Blowing Films now negotiate wider release footprints because of this appetite.

The CGI-heavy present

The current generation is unrecognisable from the Veeru Devgan era. "War" used motion-capture for cockpit sequences, allowing cameras to roam inside rendered vehicles. "Fighter" rendered entire jet interiors before compositing live-action pilots. Even dialogue-heavy scenes now carry an action beat every few minutes, often built almost entirely in post-production.

Tools like Unreal Engine, previously the domain of video games, are being used for pre-visualisation by studios like DNEG and Red Chillies VFX, both of which have offices in India and overseas. This means directors can plan a chase in a virtual Mumbai before a single road is closed.

The trade-off is authenticity. Critics argue that over-reliance on CGI has drained the chase of its rawness. Fans on Indian diaspora forums in Melbourne's Glen Waverley routinely debate whether the "Don" (2006) Toyota chase still beats anything in "Pathaan." That argument misses the point: today's chase is a different animal, judged by different rules.

Catching the chase on Australian screens

For Australian viewers, the experience of catching a new Bollywood release has matured considerably. Long gone are the days of hunting for a dodgy DVD at a market stall in Dandenong. Today, most Hindi films open at multiplexes in capital cities, sometimes simultaneously with India.

Suburban hubs lead the way. Parramatta's Westfield cinemas, Melbourne's Highpoint and Chadstone locations, and Adelaide's Rundle Mall screens regularly show new releases in Hindi with English subtitles. Tickets for opening weekend typically run between $18 and $24, comparable to mainstream Hollywood pricing.

Streaming has filled the gap for smaller titles. Netflix Australia, Stan and Amazon Prime Video regularly pick up mid-budget Bollywood thrillers within weeks of Indian theatrical release. For chase-heavy films, the home viewing experience is generally excellent, though purists argue that a packed cinema gives the best sense of communal gasps.

Chase scenes that defined their decade

• "Agneepath" (1990), the coastal road pursuit that redefined Amitabh Bachchan's comeback
• "Dhoom 2" (2006), the train-top motorcycle sequence filmed across Rio de Janeiro
• "Don" (2006), the Toyota chase weaving through South Mumbai at dawn
• "Bang Bang!" (2014), the cliff-side sequence staged in Greece and Croatia
• "War" (2019), the bike duel on an Italian cliff edge
• "Pathaan" (2023), the truck escape staged partly in Abu Dhabi's desert flats

Practical notes for catching the action locally

• New Bollywood action films usually open on Fridays, matching Indian release days
• Sydney's CBD and Parramatta screens often host premiere events with cast appearances
• HOYTS and Event Cinemas offer Gold Class and recliner seating for immersive action viewing
• Drive-in cinemas still operating in Yatala, Queensland and the Barossa Valley offer a vintage twist
• JustWatch Australia is the fastest way to track new Hindi releases on streaming

Era	Defining Films	Techniques	Signature Element
1980s-90s	Coolie, Agneepath	Practical stunts, real cars	Visible risk, Mumbai roads
Mid 1990s-2000s	Daraar, Dhoom	Tight editing, rig work	Formulaic beats, predictable moves
2010s	Ek Tha Tiger, Bang Bang	Mixed practical and CGI	International locations, larger scale
2020s	War, Pathaan, Fighter	Motion capture, Unreal Engine	Pixel-perfect spectacle, VFX-heavy

Set a calendar reminder for the next big Friday release at your nearest multiplex and you will catch the next chapter of this story live.