Movie Review: Murder 3

Less a movie and more a sustained assault on your patience levels, Murder 3 is so unrelentingly terrible to endure it feels like being beaten with a brick for two hours.

You don’t watch the Murder movies to experience the script’s exploration of the frailty of human nature across the social divide and cherish its provocative urban authenticity. You watch them to see smoochie boochies and sensual tushies. Sadly, a tax form is more sensual and a documentary about gardening is more thrilling than Murder 3.

Other than showing off the Bhatt camp’s Hollywood and World Cinema DVD collection, Murder 3 is a failed attempt at making an erotica thriller featuring a morose Randeep Hooda, newcomer Sara Loren who in 4 kilos of makeup can best be described as a Slumdog Barbie, and Aditi Rao Hydari who continually has the expression of a 12-year-old boy upset about his stolen candy. Debutant director Vishesh Bhatt tries to keep the sex quotient up and the audience engaged by incorporating stylistic touches from D-grade Sylvia Kristel's films. Mahesh Bhatt's English-To-Hindi script translator plays clumsily as do the directorial flourishes: the shots of satin, smooching, perverse mirrors, and gratingly uninteresting songs that make the film radiate the charm of a Bhojpuri version of The Hidden Face. Aditi Rao Hydari and Sara Loren do their best to simulate ‘sexiness’ on a human level, but the former kisses Randeep Hooda as if he tastes like a bowl of unrefrigerated 14-day-old milk, and the latter tries to overcompensate so hard one begins to wonder if she needs a trip to the emergency room and treated for full body tourettes. 

The story is directly lifted adapted from The Hidden Face, so apart from the Bollywoodized ending, there's nothing new for those who have already seen the film. The hardest work the filmmakers put in this film was by blocking the trailers of the original movie before release. Just like in the original, Murder 3 consists of a mélange of horror movie gimmicks and twists that are more amusing than engaging. The thrills are so packed with clichés and nonsensicalities that they’re impossible to act out, so the trio of actors, when they are not bursting into melodrama, smile mysteriously. Hooda gives a bored performance exuding the sleepy-eyed faux-macho posture of snooty disaffection. Sara Loren is a high quality bad actress, rubbery and plasticky enough to remain non-biodegradable in the centuries to come, whose lack of range makes Eesha Gupta seem nuanced by comparison. The Mickey Mouse-voiced Hydari is an incredible actress to watch, because the fact that she outdoes Sara Loren at being terrible in the film is quite a stunning feat. Mahesh Bhatt had claimed that this film would be to Hydari what Arth was to Shabhana Azmi, sadly Murder 3 is to Hydari what collagen was to Lil Kim’s face. Even Rajesh Shringarpure, well known in the Marvel universe as The Thing cannot elevate the film to a watchable level. The Bhatts even borrow the aesthetics of the original film, but somehow manage to make Goa look tedious, and ten minutes into the second half the film ends up making a powerful argument for staying home instead of paying money to watch it.

Murder 3 may be an ‘official remake’ but it is a rotting puddle of regurgitated bile, a solid case of classless direction that is better suited for 90’s school kids who had no access to Emmanuelle on the internet.