Luck: Don’t stretch your luck with this one
Sometime in April, I wrote an entry on this blog, lamenting the dearth of movies at the theatres during the producer-multiplex row. Fridays for me were just not the same without films.
But three months later, I want to eat those words.
Following duds like “Kambakkht Ishq”, “Short Kut”, “Kal Kissne Dekha” and now “Luck”, the movie going experience for me is becoming less enjoyable than ever.
Soham Shah’s “Luck” — starring Imran Khan, Mithun Chakraborty and debutante Shruti Hassan – has the germ of a good idea but is made so tackily it is difficult to find anything you might like.
Sanjay Dutt plays Moosa, a don who runs a global betting syndicate and believes in “betting on people’s luck” (whatever that means).
His assistant, Tawang (Danny Denzongpa) does the field work for him, searching for ‘lucky’ people to participate in a 20-day ‘game’ where they perform death-defying stunts to test their luck.
Imran Khan plays one of these “lucky” and desperate people as does Shruti Hassan, Ravi Kissen and Mithun Chakraborty all of whom fly to South Africa to play.
But the game in question does not give the audience any kind of thrills and I was a bit bored even during the ‘exciting’ scenes.
Perhaps it’s a result of the enormous amount of boredom that all the actors emanate while performing on screen. Some of it is bound to rub off on the audience.
Imran Khan has precisely two-and-a-half expressions in the film and you find it difficult to believe he’s the same actor from the breezy “Jaane Tu…”
Shruti Hassan makes a shaky debut, faltering in her performance. She needs to improve her diction and increase her repertoire of expressions. Everyone else hams it up, especially Ravi Kissen. Watch out for him in the climax, he is hilarious.
What Sanjay Dutt does in the film can hardly even be called acting. He saunters on to the screen, delivers his dialogues, smiles condescendingly and moves on.
Like I said before, if you are “bored” during what is supposed to be a thriller, it can hardly be a good thing.
The film is lengthy, slow and shoddily shot. Director Shah would do well to watch some of the reality shows on Indian television these days — they have far more drama and excitement.
