One of the most popular facts of Hindi films market is that here other than the star system the one element which can easily bring in the crowd into the theaters is Sex or Erotica. And since 70s there is a certain section of film-makers who have always kept this basic fact in mind before making their irrelevant films just to earn some quick money from the box office and nothing else. In other words a market where a porn star can so easily be transformed into a television celebrity reaching your whole family in the evenings and also manages to generate a decent amount of fan following without doing anything significant on the screen in terms of acting. It is pretty obvious that sex based films remain a hot property for the distributors as well as for the producers, with a minimum risk factor and a high repeat value ensuring some safe returns.
So no points for guessing that HATE STORY 2 is also one of those deliberately made business products just in search of the viewers willing to see another naked body on the screen of a known face instead of cinema. Plus it's once again a sequel which has nothing to do with its first part. But does follow the same pattern of presenting a sexy girl who can bare it all, gets exploited before the intermission and then goes on to take her revenge in the second half displaying the inner power of a woman (to put it in some respectable words).
However where the formula did come up with something watchable in its prequel, the second part falls way short of that already achieved mark, basically (again) due to its pretty ordinary second half executed in a hasty & repetitive style by the director Vishal Pandya.
Though it all begins with an inspired sequence straight away reminding you of Uma Thurman, still the progression holds your interest nicely before it all becomes easily predictable heading towards the interval. The early part of the script borrows heavily from Quentin Tarantino's cult revenge thriller KILL BILL and once it tries walking on its own, the film falls completely flat and goes even beyond the level of bearable in its final moments to say the least. In short, HATE STORY begins well, becomes average in the first 40 minutes and then simply slides down towards the bottom becoming plain ordinary, boring and even funny ruining all the hard work done by its actors in its first half.
Interestingly where the sex factor did have a steaming impact in its part one (due to Paoli Dam), the sequel surprisingly remains a non- performer in that particular aspect with nothing exciting or engaging in its revenge drama too in the later part. The erotic sequences fail to impress due to an almost none chemistry between the on screen pair and further all comfortable killings of the main targets simply ruin the expectations raised earlier.
To give them their deserving due, a few sequences in the film have some well written dialogues in its initial hour and the two lead actors Surveen Chawla and Sushant Singh do leave a mark in their opening scenes emoting well. Yet Surveen questionably uses the film as her do or die attempt following the easiest path of taking her clothes off, which unfortunately is not going to yield some great results for her as it seems. The girl has been around for a while doing some regional films, music videos and few anchoring assignments too. But I really wasn't expecting her to dive down to this level of desperation quite frankly. Plus she still has to look a lot into her styling and make-up urgently as her face does appear to be entirely different in some casually chosen costumes & hairstyles in an uneven manner.
Sushant, as mentioned above plays it tough enough to make a decent impact at first, but is reduced to a repetitive clown towards the end spoiling the good build-up. Jay Bhanushali gets limited scope in his small role whereas Neha Kaul is terrific playing Sushant's suppressed wife having no voice of her own. The supporting cast performs OK and cinematography captures the essence of the movie rightly but background score tries too hard to make it sound like a great revenge thriller post intermission.
Musically other than the pathetic 'Pink Lips' featuring Sunny Leone (jumping out of nowhere into the film post interval), the soundtrack also comes up with an average new-age version of the late 80s path breaking track "Aaj Tumpe Pyar Aaya Hai" from DAYAVAN (1988). And as history repeats itself, even after the gap of 25 years the fabulously composed song once again becomes famous more for its visual content only instead of the melodious musical notes, unfortunately (which inspires me to write a focused article on the same in the next days). Apart from the above two, few other songs in the film do appear to be soothing at their first listening. But their unintelligent timing in the script (one also coming in the climax), doesn't allow them to make any kind of impact on the viewer, whatsoever.
In all, there is no Paoli Dam here to say it indicatively and the film is nothing but an exploitive attempt just interested in en-cashing the curiosity generated by its steamy promos at the earliest. And if you still wish to see this empty tin making some good noise, then the choice is all yours.
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