Love Games
- Director
- Vikram Bhatt
- Studio
- Vishesh FilmsT-Series
- Release Date
- 7 April 2016
- Running Time
- 114 min
- Language
- Hindi
- Country
- India
- Budget
- ₹10.00 Cr
- Box Office
- ₹4.04 Cr
Review
Arjun Nair here, and "Love Games" is exactly the kind of trashy, manipulative drivel that mistakes depravity for depth. The premise—two bored, wealthy narcissists playing seduction games with unsuspecting couples—could've been a sharp commentary on moral decay and relationship toxicity, but instead director Rohit Jaywant uses it as window dressing for softcore titillation. The film confuses explicit content with intelligent storytelling, cramming in gratuitous scenes while the actual narrative collapses under the weight of its own pretensions. Gaurav Asthana's character arrives as a cardboard antagonist, and the "twist" everyone sees coming from the opening credits doesn't justify the tedious 100+ minutes we've already wasted getting there.
The performances are as hollow as the characters themselves. There's zero chemistry, zero authenticity—just actors reciting dialogue that mistakes cynicism for wit. Sam's daddy-issues-as-character-development angle is Psychology 101 regurgitated by someone who's never cracked open an actual textbook, and Ramona is nothing more than a one-note caricature of a woman without agency. Jaywant's direction is competent at the technical level but spiritually bankrupt—he shoots decadence like a music video and confuses the glossiness with style. The film wants to be provocative; instead, it's just dull and morally empty, offering nothing but empty calories masquerading as sophisticated cinema.
Rating: 4/10
Storyline
So basically, this movie opens with this old rich guy falling from a penthouse balcony, and it turns out he's married to this super wild and thrill-seeking woman named Ramona. She's married to him but she's way more interested in living on the edge with this guy Sam, who's basically her toy boy. Sam's got some serious emotional baggage though—he's always hurting himself and tells his therapist that he doesn't really believe in love, thinking it's just dressed-up lust. His whole worldview got messed up because of his parents' relationship falling apart, and he figures all love stories just end badly anyway.
Ramona hears Sam complaining about how he's never experienced real love and decides to prove him wrong by suggesting they play this twisted game. The rules are pretty messed up: they find couples at fancy parties who seem super happy together, and then they compete to see who can successfully seduce one of them into bed. It's basically a game of seduction and betrayal wrapped up as some kind of relationship experiment. The first time they play, things get intense when Sam wins by getting the wife to cheat on her husband, and Ramona gets so angry about losing that she nearly shoots him.
Things escalate from there when they set their sights on a new target—this successful criminal lawyer named Gaurav Asthana who seems to be in a happy relationship. As they start playing their twisted game with this new couple, you get the sense that things are going to get way more complicated and dangerous than they bargained for.
