Son of veteran writer-director OP Dutta, JP Dutta made his directorial debut with Ghulami (1985), a film that was penned by his father and tackled the theme of feudal wars between the Jats and Thakurs in Rajasthan. Featuring a talented cast including Dharmendra, Mithun Chakraborty, Naseeruddin Shah and Smita Patil, the film is a saga of violence that does not fall into the convention of offering a happy ending. These themes have made themselves a key characteristic of JP Dutta’s films. JP Dutta’s films have featured feudal wars, caste politics, machismo and violence. In Yateem (1988), a police officer, played by Kulbhushan Kharbanda, adopts the orphaned son of a dacoit who grows up to be a policeman, played by Sunny Deol, who in turn falls in love with his saviour’s daughter, played by Farha Naaz. But things get complicated when the older policeman’s young second wife also gets attracted to the hero. JP Dutta has drawn some impressive performances from his leading men, particularly Sunny Deol in Yateem (1988) and Sanjay Dutt in Hathyar (1989). In the latter film, Sanjay Dutt plays an innocent young man caught in a bloody gang rivalry. It was a rare film that the director shot in Mumbai before heading back to Rajasthan for another epic battle between warring families in Kshatriya (1993), with Dharmendra and Vinod Khanna joining Deol and Dutt in the multi-generational feud.

JP Dutta's ambitious multi-starrer war saga Border (1997) had an ensemble cast that included Sunny Deol, Jackie Shroff, Suniel Shetty, Akshaye Khanna, Tabu and Pooja Bhatt, and drew inspiration from a real-life incident during the Indo-Pak war of 1971 when a small band of soldiers of the Punjab regiment defended their post against an entire division of the enemy infantry in a night-long resistance. This was perhaps the only film apart from Chetan Anand’s Haqeeqat (1964) that staged such elaborate war sequences and focused entirely on the travails of soldiers on the frontlines. Javed Akhtar’s lyrics and Anu Malik’s music articulated the mixed emotions of the jawans and officers as they left their homes and families not knowing if and when they would return through songs like “Sandese aate hain”, beautifully rendered by Sonu Nigam and Roopkumar Rathod. JP Dutta won the National Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration for this film.

JP Dutta also launched Abhishek Bachchan and Kareena Kapoor in Refugee (2000) and tried to replicate the magic of Border with LOC Kargil (2003) by using a similar cast and infusing the film with patriotic fervour, yet he did not find the same degree of success. In 2006, he attempted a remake of Muzaffar Ali’s classic Umrao Jaan (1981) starring Aishwarya Rai, which ended up being a critical and commercial failure.

JP Dutta owns the film production company that is named J P Gene. He is married to Bindiya Goswami, who was a popular actress in the 1970s.