Running out of luck

Film: Luck
Cast:  Sanjay Dutt, Imran Khan, Danny Denzongpa, Mithun Chakraborty, Shruti Haasan
Director: Soham Shah
Rating: **

When you watch certain movies you know the writers and director did not know where to stop, simply lacked conviction and loved the title of their film. You can write ‘luck’ down on each sheet of this script 10 times and then place cliches and metaphors about luck on either side of the word. Then assign each of these lines to a team of seven characters and let it rip!

This is not a good thing. Luck is severely letdown by its dialogues, from being overwritten and under-edited. It’s a thriller without thrills and doesn’t take enough risks.

Mussa (Sanjay Dutt, dull besides his velvet jackets over Pathani) is the mastermind behind a global organised underground trade of gambling on human life and the luck of others. He carefully selects a group for the ultimate gamble and a chance to win Rs20 crore in 20 days.

Among them is a regular but troubled guy, Ram (Imran Khan), who discovers his luck only when Tamaang (Danny Denzongpa) and gambling come into his life. Denzongpa has the worst luck — besides a peculiar orange skin tone, he has the worst dialogues of all, like ‘Tu ATM loot ke jail jaaega, tu khud hi ek ATM hai’.

Enlisted by Mussa, Tamaang goes around the country and even to Pakistan, collecting ‘lucky charms’. Each character has a compulsion for getting into the game - to pay off debts, to fund an ailing wife’s treatment, for revenge etc.

The events are like a reality show with stunts and eliminations, except of the fatal kind. It takes a while to get to the ‘heart’ of the matter till the one moment which makes you almost fall off your seat in hysterical laughter. Hampered by an absurd script, the actors spit out their punch-lines as if enacting in isolation, even when testing their luck in death-defying stunts.

Of the cast, Imran Khan and Ravi Kisshen stand out and infuse some energy into their characters. Mithun Chakraborty and Imran’s potentially moving track of the ex-army man mentor and student is unexplored. Shruti Haasan has a long way to go and much to learn, especially in dialogue delivery. Points for the action sequences by Allan Amin and the scale and for a few well-executed scenes.

There are variations of 13 Tzameti, Intacto and The Condemned here, but unlike those films, this one is too afraid to take chances.