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Wednesday 20 April 2011

Film Review - Game (2011)

Game
Director: Abhinay Deo
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Kangna Ranaut, etc.



A skilled narrator can turn the silly thing into unexpected. An ordinary one simply makes a fool of himself.

Debutant director Abhinay Deo's Game is one such poor endeavor. While Deo conveys a noticeable style for creating visual drama out of every scene, he also overuses this talent to a point where it all appears superficial and staged.  

Gloss too much, however, isn't one of Game's only issues. The professed thriller is mostly let down by Althea Delmas Kaushal, responsible for its bizarre story and screenplay. In place of building a sleek whodunit around dark objectives and premeditated interlinks, Kaushal is preoccupied in magnifying the scale by picking a random bunch of exotic/mainstream countries – Turkey, Greece, Thailand, England and India and forcibly catching its hand-picked inhabitants in a crime labyrinth against a dated motive and inevitability.

So there's an Istanbul-based drug dealer (Abhishek Bachchan), a Prime Ministerial candidate from Bangkok (Boman Irani), Mumbai's reigning superstar (Jimmy Shergill), a troubled journalist from London (Shahana Goswami) and a stinking rich industrialist from Samos (Anupam Kher). Also filling up the frames are a gritty International Vigilance Squad officer (Kangana Ranaut) and a bootylicious club dancer (Sarah Jane Dias). It's almost as if Deo developed a dry sense of humour to say, 'Indians, they're everywhere.' Alas, Game and wit have nothing to do with each other.

Despite Game's flaccid first half and dull soundtrack (Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy), its little-above-two hours running time makes the ordeal a lot less painful than it could be.  And though it could do with a stunning leading man -- Bachchan Jr is neither Bond nor Poirot nor striking -- Kangana Ranaut makes up for one's lack of energy and sparkling teeth with an attitude that is as tidy as her perfectly knotted bun. Additionally for her, realism is never a prerequisite of this far-fetched endeavor and the actress appears to be authentically enjoying playing a fashion-forward cop whose idea of contemplation is a furiously flickering ball pen.  It's so funny; you almost forgive her dialogue delivery.

On the side, Shergill, Kher and Irani do their bit satisfactorily enough providing Game some of its rare menacing moments. Too bad Shahana Goswami's potential is wasted. In a film shot like a catalog, model Sarah Jane Dias makes for one hell of a photogenic sight. It's hard to judge the first-timer beyond that because she's barely got anything to say or do.

Overall, it is an average film.

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