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When the sizzle fizzles out
Highlights
Action films with a generous addition of steamy scenes, promoted aggressively over various media platforms are low-hanging fruits for film banners. Most of the times, it turns out to be a safe bet with a combination of lesser-priced star cast and a predictable plotline which just needs to keep the audience hooked for its running time.
Action films with a generous addition of steamy scenes, promoted aggressively over various media platforms are low-hanging fruits for film banners. Most of the times, it turns out to be a safe bet with a combination of lesser-priced star cast and a predictable plotline which just needs to keep the audience hooked for its running time.
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The ‘Hate Story’ franchise, into its third edition, emerges out of this very premise. With none of its actors, very big names as far as box-office pull goes, the next best is to throw them together in a 131-minute venture, juggle around the heroes with well-toned bodies, jiggle the heroines with skimpy and skin-tight costumes and voila! There is everything for everyone.
Twists and turns are many and so are lip-locks and crushing chemistry between the men and women onscreen, in a tale of betrayal, treachery, lust and revenge. Aditya Diwan (Sharman Joshi), the dapper owner of a diversified group of companies is pitted against a rival, Saurabh Singhania (Karan Singh Grover), who pops from nowhere and puts the former’s business acumen to severe test. Worse, Saurabh seeks the pleasure of Aditya’s wife, Siya (Zarine Khan), for a night if he is to stay off the chase and keep off from Sharman.
From here on, the intensity of the battle builds up, with the viewers shifting their loyalties between the two hunks as the film progresses. Thrown into this are many others like Kaaya Sharma (Daisy Shah), Aditya’s employee, who also is shown barely intelligent to fit the bill and keep the movie running till its climax, which provides the final twist to the movie.
Sufficiently exciting, one may conclude. For its part, the producer T-Series, exploiting its immense music library remixes a popular number ‘Tumhe apna banane ki kasam khayi hai, from the Sanjay Dutt- Pooja Bhatt hit ‘Sadak’ released in 1991, as a theme song. The director, Vishal Pandya, with the successful earlier version under his belt, assumes that a strong coating of sex to macho action despite a tame screenplay and a weather-beaten story can do the trick.
However, the issues which were supposed to the film’s USPs turn out to be its biggest let-downs. While Sharman does his bit pretty effectively, his onscreen rival and a hunk of a frame, Karan Singh Grover fills up the role with more brawn than cold, steely emotion which it demands.
The women are comfortable in their skins and have no scope for anything other than the voyeuristic thrill they provide till the end for a largely, wolf-whistling male audience in the cinema hall where the critic saw this film. One ends up ‘hating’ the director for this ‘story’, which could have been better narrated with less reliance on sizzle and more on building up a knotty and gripping suspense.
K Naresh Kumar
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