The new Borat film includes a scene where Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani sticks his hand down his pants, "apparently touching his genitals", whilst in the presence of a young woman pretending to be a far-right journalist.
The embargo on reviews for the hotly-anticipated new Sacha Baron Cohen comedy lifted on Thursday morning (NZ time).
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan - to use its full title - is the sequel to 2006's smash-hit film, in which Cohen portrayed a bumbling, anti-Semitic reporter from the central Asian nation on a trip to the United States.
According to the first reviews, in the new film Borat is dispatched to the US once again, this time to bribe the leadership into praising the country's strongman President. His plan is to give his 15-year-old daughter Tutar to "p**sy hound" Mike Pence or another member of Trump's inner circle.
At one point, Tutar poses as a far-right journalist and somehow manages to get Giuliani, the 76-year-old former Mayor of New York, to agree to an interview about the COVID-19 pandemic - during which he coughs without a mask, drinks spirits, flirts with Tutar and agrees to eat a bat.
Afterwards the pair retreat to a hotel room. Tutar removes Giuliani's microphone, as he pats her on the back. Then when she turns away, he lies on the bed and sticks his hand down his pants. It's not clear what he was doing, the most generous explanation given in reports being that he may have been tucking his shirt in.
Cohen - as Borat - then bursts in and shouts, "She's 15. She's too old for you."
The incident took place in July - a confused Giuliani calling the police on July 7 to report it.
"This guy comes running in, wearing a crazy, what I would say was a pink transgender outfit," he told the New York Post at the time.
"It was a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top, it looked absurd. He had the beard, bare legs, and wasn't what I would call distractingly attractive."
Giuliani said he only later realised it was Cohen - and felt good, because "he didn't get me". Maria Bakalova, the actress who portrays Tutar, is 24.
Giuliani didn't initially respond to the reports, but later tweeted it was "a complete fabrication".
"At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate. If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise he is a stone-cold liar."
He also claimed the scene was "an effort to blunt my relentless exposure of the criminality and depravity of Joe Biden and his entire family", despite it being filmed in July, months before the story he's referring to broke.
A Guardian reporter who's seen the footage said the "circumstances of the setup appear consensual, with Giuliani led to believe he was being courted".
Entertainment site Complex said the scene, which appears near the end of the film, is "vile and shocking".
"Given the nature of the scene in question, it's easily argued that this is more than a worthy exception to the no-spoilers approach," wrote Trace William Cowen.
"They are strategically interrupted before more transpires, but you cannot help wondering exactly what Giuliani may have done next," wrote Vanity Fair's Sonia Saraiya.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is out this week on Amazon Prime Video. Early reviews have positive, with many saying Bakalova's portrayal of Tutar is a match for Cohen's Borat.
