DELHI: Like many Bollywood potboilers, the movie Crook, set in Melbourne, has a troubled hero, busty beauties, zippy dance sequences and ultra-violent villains. Unfortunately for Australia, most of the baddies are white thugs who roam the streets beating up Indians.

Crook is set against the backdrop of the recent attacks on Indian students. Romper Stomper-style louts wearing balaclavas are shown brutally beating an Indian in a parking lot and knifing a Pakistani convenience store owner because he dared to marry a white woman.

A battered Indian student with wounds on his face tells the crowd at a protest march: ''I got this punishment due to my colour - it's because I'm an Indian.'' There's even a bigoted policeman in cahoots with racist gang members.

But the xenophobia in Crook isn't all one-sided. Towards the end of the story, after some trademark Bollywood plot twists, several Indian characters reveal deep racial prejudice and resort to violence against the locals.