Players – Review

“Wonderful, there are many scripts to choose”

“No, this time lets not allow people to say Bollywood blatantly rips off Hollywood without due credits”

“So what shall we do?”

“Let’s make an official remake of a Hollywood movie”

“Sounds good”

“International heist subject would be great. We can have phoren locations, added glamour, firangi characters and also chance to show off glitzy cars”

“Sounds great”

After pondering over many Hollywood films, the choice is narrowed.

So if you think it is an easy job to remake a proven successful movie, you are mistaken.  Yes, you have a ready set formula, you have all the essential ingredients in the movie to make a wonderful adaptation but then you end up spoiling it with your own dose of sentiments, extra twists and turns, you have nobler cause attached to the thieves after all they are the heroes too and in short you add dollops of  bakwas and spoil the show.

That is Players directed by the director duo Abbas-Mustan for you,  the desi version of  2003 release The Italian Job  which itself is a remake of  1969 released British film of the same name.

Mini-Spoiler Alert: Skip the next  para, if you have not seen Italian Job and all set to watch the desi version.

So retired legendary robber, Victor da serving now jail sentence is approached by his trusted aide Charlie who  sets his eyes now on an eye-popping 10K crore worth gold bars being shifted from Russia to Romania.  Under Victor da’s plan and guidance he groups an ensemble of specialists to help him in the heist. While the heist was successful what follows is a series of betrayals, revenge and twists and turns.

The opening scene in itself is an indication of how the movie is going to be.  Imagine this, the girl friend goes to a upmarket jewellery store and asks for the best of the best piece. The hero wearing a black mask jumps from the top of the building right into the window pane just to say hello and scoots off the window with the jewellery piece just like that.

If that is not enough. Imagine this. Victor da, serving jail term is teaching cops the art of robbery. And if this is not enough, our hero enters the high security prison as if it is  a resort and joins the conversation! How naaaice!!! And when Vicror da acts out a heartache,  the cops pleads the doctor  to save his life since they have much more to learn from him! Whoa!

And then we have a supposedly high security,  well guarded  huge palatial sprawling house of the baddy and our hero just rams his way all through the house right to the room where the baddy holds the lady good geek. Whoa! Whoa!

Abhishek Bachchan looks like he  playing  practice session for his upcoming Dhoom 3 while Bobby Deol comes across weary in a countable scenes and then dies a martyr.  Pity him.  Vinod khanna looks visibly weak and struggles. While for Bibs, it is a very stereotypical role one can look forward to. And then we have Sonam reprising the role of a geek who can drive fast and show her middle finger. As for her acting, it is her amateurish best! Add to this Omi Vaidya, who is trapped in his 3 Idiot’s role Chatur Ramalingam but then to his credit, he does delivers few laughable moments.  We do have Johnny Lever who for the laughter’s sake has a firangi kids, firangi wife and a firangi kaka all donning a perfect desi characterizations.

Did I forget anyone? Well not forget but then I kept the best of the pick for the last. Neil Nitin Mukesh is the surprise baddy here and that too a geeky baddy.  He gets to flash his stylish best and poses without having to strain for delivering emotions that the unlucky heroes needs to enact.

Having said this, the movie does has its own little bit of goodies like sleek cinematography and few nicely executed action sequences but then they are far and few and not enough to hold the movie on its own.

GingerChai verdict: A poor Italian Job.