Review: When luck becomes a bad word

Luck (U/A)
Director: Soham Shah
Cast: Mithun Chakraborty, Sanjay Dutt, Imran Khan, Shruti Haasan, Ravi Kishan, Chitrashi Rawat, Danny Denzongpa
Critic's rating: * ½

Danny Denzongpa is Tamang, who is on the lookout for people with 'luck'. These lucky people will participate in a Fear Factor-like contest, where they will need all their luck to survive; the unlucky will die.

So Tamang delivers reams and reams of dialogue on luck, people with luck, how luck can change, how luck can save you, how luck can do this, luck can do that, and so on. If my repeated use of the word is already getting your goat, then you can well imagine what it would be like to watch this film, called — sigh! — Luck.

Welcome to the new-age Hindi action film. The dialogues are cheesy, the characters sketchy, the story nonsensical, and the scenes lifted straight from foreign films. Sanjay Gupta beware, someone else is treading your path.

Immediately after the opening sequence, which introduces the character of gangster/bettor Mousa (Sanjay Dutt, who else!), you know the film would require you to suspend disbelief if you are to be able to enjoy it at all.

Ram Mehra (Imran Khan, our hero) needs to run away to America, away from creditors left behind by his late father. He needs money and he needs it fast. You are supposed to pine for the sweet and vulnerable hero, even if he is shown taking his mother shopping in a mall barely days after his father's death.

So, our hero meets Tamang, who takes him to South Africa to be part of a contest that will require him to exhibit some daredevilry. It does not matter that the hero is a banker. He can jump, run, fight atop a moving train — he is the hero, remember? There are others too — a retired army man (a jaded Mithun Chakraborty), a Pakistani (Chitrashi, good) and a serial killer Raghav (Ravi Kishan, apt).

There is Shruti Haasan too, playing a girl called Ayesha. It turns out that she is actually Natasha, Ayesha's twin out to wreak vengeance on Moussa who, she thinks, was responsible for Ayesha's death. She makes one of the most lacklustre film debuts in a role that is almost incidental. She acts like a kid performing her first stage show at her school annual day. It would be surprising if she has actually done any.

Dialogue writer/director Soham Shah was probably not sure that audiences would understand that his film, titled Luck, is all about luck. So he makes his characters repeat it so many times through the film that it almost becomes a dirty word.

Shah also happily steals dialogues from action films of the 1980s and 1990s, which used to be a rage among frontbenchers. "Bhaade pe toh tattu bhi milte hain", "yeh khud khushi nahi, khud ki khushi hai", and "main aadmi kharidta nahi, bhaade pe leta hoon" leave you feeling a strange mixture of consternation and amusement. You crack up, however, when Mousa tells Ram, "Tumhe mere saath wahi karna hai jo tumne uss raat Tamang ke saath kiya tha." Talk of innuendo!

The film starts off better than it ends. The first half hooks you with some interesting action sequences and slick cinematography, but soon your interest begins to flag. The last 20 minutes simply leave you bewildered. Our hero gets shot in the chest but survives, because his "heart is on the right side". The doctor holds up an X-ray explaining to our hero what is called a "mirror image". Our hero looks back, incredulous. Exactly our reaction!

Our hero is Imran Khan. After he charmed you as Jai in his debut film Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na, which seemed to have been written for him, he has only disappointed audiences. In Luck, Khan goes a step further, proving he is anything but hero material. Though his acting has always been suspect, in Luck he does everything a quintessential Hindi film hero should do — dance, fight, emote — and fails on all three counts. If he is still considered among the bright new prospects of Hindi cinema today, he has been plainly lucky.

That may change after this film. What doesn't seem to change, however, is the way our filmmakers blow up money, time, and resources, film after film. What luck!