Bollywood has always been obsessed to formula films. Once a formula became hit (Lost twin brothers, love story of poor boy and rich girl, A revenge seeking Naagin, a rebel becomes Dacoit or whatever..), filmmakers waste no time to adopt it and make films repeatedly on the formula till it keeps working. Lets have a look on a recent formula very popular these days in Bollywood for thriller films. Though it was started from Vivek Agnihotri’s Hate Story, Vishal Pandya took it to new heights. A hot actress (two or three if possible), story of love, lies and betrayal and remix of some old melodious Bollywood tracks, this formula is really doing well for Indian thrillers. Hate Story 2 and Hate Story 3 did very well on the box office and upcoming film Wajah Tum To Ho is seemingly going to maintain the trend.
Plot elements and characters are mostly lifted from Hollywood films. Hate story 3 was inspired from Indecent Proposal, Wajah Tum Ho tells the story of a serial killer who kills his victims brutally while streaming it on Internet through webcam (the plot is quite similar to Gregory Hoblit’s English film ‘Untraceable’). But since most of the Indian audiences don’t watch English cinema, these similarities of plots are totally OK for them. Big stars are not associated with these films, thus they are made on tight budgets and recovers the cost faster than mega budget super star films.
So creativity is taking a back seat for these Indian thrillers. Just copy-paste some songs, some plots and asks your hot babe to dress moderately, shoot some sensuous sex scenes (even choreography on bed is common too in all these films, you can see similar shots in all the trailers). The result is a lucrative, profit making film. And in India if a film is making money, who cares for the art? Actually it’s business, isn’t it??
