In the last nine years, Mohit Suri has made nine films. Two things have not changed about the man, two things which make or break his movies. One his ear for music and two his penchant for copying foreign films. One which makes him a hero and two which makes him ek villain.

That boy who used to play scenes from Out of Time on DVD over and over again on the sets of Zeher before canning a single shot back in 2004, has grown but not grown-up. Grown as a filmmaker, from the mounting to the shot-taking to the handling of actors, but not grown up to acknowledge his source or even adapt it to something a little original.

Mohit’s obviously raided the Korean shelf in the DVD library this time and plucked out Kim Jee-Woon’s 2010 winner I Saw The Devil. But that was a Sundance Film Festival-premiering stomach-churning thriller, unrelenting in its depiction of blood and gore. So, in his attempt to soften things up and make it masala Bollywood, Mohit and his writer (Tushar Hiranandani) resort to a love story between Guru (Sidharth Malhotra) and Aisha (Shraddha Kapoor) which overdoses on smiles and balloons. Add to that a flutter of butterflies and a pride of peacocks, raining snow and shooting stars, all in overdone CGI.

The villain of the piece, as the trailers promised you, is Riteish Deshmukh, who plays a telephone mechanic named Rakesh. Now he bumps off random women not out of any sexual need, because, you know, this is a U/A film, which doesn’t want to let go of the family audience.

Since he can’t get back at his wife (Aamna Sharif), who religiously shouts at him at home every night, he plunges his red screwdriver into any lady who taunts him. Add to that a voice-over of middle-class angst and you also want sympathy for your villain. Prashant Narayanan’s serial killer in Murder 2, copied by Mohit from another Korean film The Chaser, was at least true to his feelings –– and the original.

Mr Suri is in such a tearing hurry to tell his story that the story runs out long before the film. By the time the interval comes, Guru has tracked down Rakesh, thanks to a very convenient coincidence, rendering the last hour almost useless. In fact, they have to show the big opening scene a second time in the second half, almost like those boring recaps at the start of TV soaps.

Also, the key element of the Korean original –– how one becomes a monster while fighting a monster –– is taken out because Guru here is a gunda right from the start.

But despite the contrived replication, the slush and the sentimentality, the very ’80s dialogues and the forced good vs bad gyan-giving, there is a lot of oomph in Ek Villain. Collaborating again with his Aashiqui 2 cinematographer Vishnu Rao, Mohit adds oodles of style and sleekness to his scenes, whether he’s shooting songs or filming action. There’s one terrific long shot of Sidharth punching his way through dozens of baddies at the jetty, very reminiscent of the Oldboy corridor action shot.

The other big high of the film is the music, of course. Besides the ear-worm Galliyan (Ankit Tiwari), which is a major reason for the huge box-office opening, Banjaara, Zaroorat and Humdard (Mithoon) also stay with you after the film. Mohit not only has the knack of picking out the best tracks of the year, he can incorporate them in the narrative seamlessly, even when he’s making a thriller.

Sidharth is the best of the three leads. After the soft and romantic turn in Hasee Toh Phasee, he is the angry young man here, almost bulldozing his way through the film with his clenched teeth and loud grunts. Shot mostly from low angles and in the very Korean white-shirt-black-suit ensemble, Guru’s the man!

Quite a departure from the quiet and knowing girl she played in Aashiqui 2, Shraddha here is made a little too chirpy for comfort. Riteish is effective as the face of evil but he stops well short of running away with the film. You can’t help but wonder where a Nawaz or an Irrfan would have taken this character. It’s great to see Remo Fernandes having fun in his cameo as the Goan mafia boss but that cackle of Kamaal R. Khan will haunt you forever.

In his experiments with plagiarism, Mohit Suri has sure turned into an exciting filmmaker but in a day and age when even his famously copycat uncle, Mahesh Bhatt, is buying rights of the original films, he has to stop being the man of steal. For lovers of cinema to not shout out to him: “Aye Villain!”