Hate Story 4 Movie Review: It Is The Pao-Bhaji Version Of Sidney Sheldon

Starring :Urvashi Rautela, Karan Vahi, Vivan Bhatena, Gulshan Grover

Directed  by: Vishal Pandya

Rating: ***(3 stars)

She stoops to conquer.And how! For a  major part of the film all we get to see is the heroine’s cleavage, thighs, posterior and other anatomical revelations that perhaps pubescent boys still find exciting, provided they’ve no access  to internet porn and don’t  know who Sunny Leone is.

For the rest Hate Story 4 is a treasury of unintentional humour. Two brothers played by Karan Wahi and Vivan Bhatena, who let me tell you are not bad actors just luckless losers,fight over Urvashi Rautela as though she were a freshly  baked  roast-chicken dish being served up at a  banquet for  the horny.

There is another  temptress in  a tiny dress played by  newcomer Ihana Dhillon.She is married to(I think) Vivan Bathena as per plot. One can’t really be sure. All bodies writhing and moaning in bed and  on  the dancefloor look identical.

As some wise guy (could it be this  film’s dialogue writer Milap Jhaveri?) once said, bhala  horny ko kaun rok sakta hai? The two brothers with  a hormonal imbalance (with all the phlilandering where  do they  find the time to make those millions?) pant after  MsRautela like well-exercised  bulls romancing the red rag .

 Much of the libidinous narrative is  designed like an extended mating game with the two brothers lusting after Ms Rautela with  thesingleminded concentration of monks looking  for  moksha in their mojo.

Mojo ki baat yeh hai ki, both the brothers are later joined by their father in lusting for Ms  Rautela.Since the father is played by Gulshan Grover he manages to infuse  a certain eclectic gusto  into his  sleazy part .If you can stop squirming at  the sleaze,that’s when the  fun begins.

Once we  accept the sleazy aspirations of  this crotch-level  triangle(I am  excluding Ms Dillon from the lust ring as I am not sure where she fitted in) the film is fun.A femme-fatale in a  flimsy dress is  not  so unbearable provided she  knows her mind as well as her  body. Rautela is  a full-blown anti-heroine who mouths her insanely ambitious lines about owning her sexuality  even  if it means losing out on  her ambitions, with  conviction.This woman means  business.

Nothing as radical as Pauli Dam in one of the Hate Story  films saying, “I want to  be the No.1  whore.”   But Rautela is  not the simpering sobbing demure seductress whom we have been seeing in Hindi films.She allows the camera to pull up as close to her body as a beloved lover.

It comes as  surprise to know that a film which so unabashedly objectifies the female is shot by a female cinematographer. But then if men can peer up  cleavages and dresses, why can’t women do  the same?