Movie Review: Game (2010)

Article first published as Movie Review: Game (2010) on Blogcritics.

Bollywood's ambition of successfully making a murder thriller has very seldom matured into a watchable film. Unlike rom-coms like Band Baaja Baraat, thrillers don't fare too well with the audience. The main reason behind the incapability of Indian cinema as far as thrillers are concerned is the copied script/story that is often borrowed from a Hollywood flick. What happens is that film-makers borrow a story from Hollywood but do not have the budget or the technical expertise to carry the film forward. Another issue is the limited number of stars available to the film-makers and their reluctance in casting anyone who is not a popular star!

"Game" suffers with the later more than the former. As far as the script is concerned, the film has a very jumbled up story that is good in parts but unbelievably poor in others. It is very patchy with a feeling that many individual parts of the story were forcefully attached together to make a whole.
"Game" is a story about a man Kabir Malhotra (Anupam Kher) whose illegitimate daughter is killed in her early 20s. He collects evidence against the people who he blames for her death and calls them deceptively at his personal Island only to hand them over to international police. The people he invites are, OP Ramsay (Presidential Candidate of Thailand) (Boman Irani), Neil Menon (Drug Dealer) (Abhishek Bachchan), Tisha Khanna (The twin sister of his dead daughter) (Shahana Goswami) and Vikram Kapoor (A film actor) (Jimmy Shergil). After he has told them their contributions in the death of his daughter and that they will be handed to the police with the file that has evidence against them, Kabir Malhotra apparently commits suicide by shooting himself in the temple leaving all four of his guests as suspects for murder!

When Inspector Sia Agnihotri (Kangna Ranaut) comes to take the evidence and the four guests as requested by Kabir, she in turn finds Kabir dead and her intelligent investigation soon reveals that Kabir did not kill himself but was murdered.
"Game" is a search for Kabir Malhotra's murderer and what happens next is better seen than narrated, so I won't spoil it for you.
The cast has failed to impress, with Abhishek doing what he does best i.e playing a slick, stylish role and Jimmy Shergil doing what he does best i.e miserably failing to impress! The worst performance, however, was Kangna Ranaut's and that may be due to the inappropriate casting more than anything else. For a girl who is not comfortable speaking English, to be given a character that speaks more English than Hindi, is unfair and extremely senseless. All in all the acting was below par.

The film's overall impression is below average, with stale action sequences, poor dialogs (unlike Farhan Akthar) and mediocre acting (despite some heavy names). I give it a meager 2.5/5 and you can skip it if you have better things to do!