'Game' (Hindi, Action)
Director: Abhinay Deo
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Kangna Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Boman Irani, Jimmy Shergill
Four characters in four cities — Istanbul, Bangkok, Mumbai and London — get a letter from the same person. Each letter has a different proposition but the caveat is the same — be at the Greek Island of Samos by a specific date. The four strangers congregate at this isolated island, where they are greeted by Samara (Gauhar Khan), executive assistant to the reclusive billionaire Kabir Malhotra (Anupam Kher).
Here, the intricate plot of this whodunit-thriller, with hints of Agatha Christie’s ‘And Then There Were None’ and Krishna Shah’s Shalimar, is unveiled. Rather tautly told, this brings us to the half-way mark, but the post-interval half completely unravels. Neil Menon (Abhishek Bachchan) is a casino and nightclub owner from Istanbul on the run from the Colombian drug lords to whom he owes millions. OP Ramsay (Boman Irani) is an Indian living in Bangkok who is a contender for the Prime Minister’s post in Thailand.
Tisha Khanna (Shahana Goswami) is a reporter in London but personal problems seem to have driven her to drink and then to Samos. Movie star Vikram Kapoor (Jimmy Shergill) journeys from Mumbai to Samos hoping to get away from his dark secrets.
Malhotra’s letter simply lures these four people to his island where he confronts them with the part they have played in the destruction and death of his estranged daughter Maya (Sara Jane Dias). Considering that Malhotra never knew his daughter and had abandoned her mother, his anger and calculated need for justice is inexplicable. But he convinces them that evidence is stacked up against them and will be handed over to the police officers of the International Vigilance Squad arriving on the remote island the next morning.
But Malhotra does not factor in a murder into his immaculately planned game. Two murders, and four primary suspects with a motive. Who did it? At this point a well written thriller would have contained the action to the movements and motives of these four characters and thrown a few red herrings in here and there. But ‘Game’ is not a well written script; in fact it is full of loopholes and loose ends.
Plus the clues are so obvious and unsubtle that even if you do not guess the killer, you certainly reduce the number of suspects pretty easily. The narrative also chops around clumsily. Flashbacks are inserted in indiscriminately and without warning which makes you question the sequence of events. And the characters travel across continents like they were commuting from one end of the city to the other. Crimes are committed and neither explained nor justified.
While the film is slick in terms of its production values, camerawork, background music, action, location and costumes, it is let down by an atrocious soundtrack by Shankar- Ehsaan-Loy, textbook performances by Kher, Goswami, Irani and Shergill, but mostly by a chronically inconsistent script by Althea Delmas Kaushal.
Given this, ad filmmaker Abhinay Deo makes a competent debut as director but even he can do nothing to salvage the second half and the absurd conclusion. Of the rest of the cast, Kangna Ranaut shows some spunk as Sia Agnihotri, the Intelligence Vigilance officer who adds something of a black comedy touch to the proceedings.
In Sia, Abhishek Bachchan finds a good bouncing board for his mischievous Neil. Sara Jane Dias makes little impact in her big screen launch and could certainly benefit from some dancing lessons. The makers have clearly spent crores on this venture, a sum they will find hard to recoup because ‘Game’ is all style, no substance.
