The second coming

After a weekend of mixed reviews,Murder 2 folks Jacqueline Fernandez,Mahesh Bhatt and Mohit Suri were in town on Sunday to promote their latest film.

Mahesh Bhatt,Mohit Suri and Jacqueline Fernandez,in a recent visit to Pune,gushed at the good response Murder 2 has garnered so far

After a weekend of mixed reviews,Murder 2 folks Jacqueline Fernandez,Mahesh Bhatt and Mohit Suri were in town on Sunday to promote their latest film. This is Suris first movie after the lacklustre response to Crook in 2010 and he seemed happy with the response so far. All three stressed on the difference between this movie and the previous one,saying that the second instalment deals with much darker themes of violence and killing. This previous decade has been one where we explored the themes of sleaze,sex and violence in movies. We did that with Murder,and with the sequel we have tried to deal with a much more serious and hard-hitting theme. I want to make sex,guilt free, Bhatt declared. The Indian audience wants melodrama and I give them that. The Neeraj Grover murder case was even more grim than my film,but the whole nation was so interested in that kind of news. The intention was not to make a dark,grim movie,it is in fact a mild show of reality. The country is becoming so unsafe for women,newspapers are full of rapes,murders,and assaults. Today,rape happens even in police stations.

Unlike the first movie,which was based on an extra-marital affair,the sequel deals with the darker and more violent topic of prostitution,with the villain being a psychopathic killer played by actor Prashant Narayanan. Emraan Hashmi plays an ex-Goa-policeman who is in a relationship with Priya (Fernanadez). The story revolves around the case of a number of prostitutes who have disappeared and the steps taken by Arjun to find them.

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When questioned about the accusations of the film having been lifted from a Korean film called The Chaser,Bhatt said,All Hindi movies are like a patched quilt. You can always find a reference to some foreign movie somewhere or the other,but these accusations are completely false. Suri confessed that the movie contains some shots from Silence of the Lambs and Saw,but that the storyline is all their own.

At the press conference,Bhatt said that one of the motivations behind making a sequel was marketing impulse,because it ensures at least a 40 per cent audience. “It’s all about the money. A Jism and Murder always attracts more people than a Zakhm or Saaransh,which are given critical acclaim and national awards.The elite may call these movies sleazy,but ultimately they do watch them behind closed doors, he said. He also announced tentative plans to make more movies in the Murder franchise with Suri at the helm. All three appeared relaxed and satisfied with the response to the movie,and intended to leave Pune,as Bhatt said,high on the fumes of success.”

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