'Game' is an April Fools' joke

You remember how in school you pulled fast ones on your friends on April Fools' day? It would basically entail a bit of lying, a whole lot of acting innocent and then that final moment of revelation when you pronounced, exultantly, that all of it was a joke. You laughed, acted smug, even gloated.

Watching Game feels like you are at the receiving end of a very sick joke. It's a murder mystery, so keeping you slightly confused comes with the package, but you hope for the pieces to fall in place eventually. In the process, you are initially confused, then befuddled and then, exasperated. 

And when the suspense is revealed, you want to take a stick and beat yourself up till you bleed. And you can't help but imagine that while you're at it, the trio of Farhan Akhtar (dialogues), Althea Delmas Kaushal (screenplay) and director Abhinay Deo will spring right in front of you, pointing fingers, laughing. 'You've been Gamed!' they'll declare.

A number of plot points all open up in Game within minutes of each other. The makers may want you to believe that story is moving fast, but nothing really happens for the longest time. You are made to see the lives of our four charadcters, Neil Menon (Abhishek) a casino owner in Istanbul, OP Ramsay (Irani), prime ministerial candidate of Thailand, Vikram Kapoor (Shergill), a Bollywood superstar and Tisha Khanna (Goswami), a crime journalist.

All four have demons to deal with and an invitation to baron Kabir Malhotra's private island in Greece is their chance at redemption. But going there makes matters worse. Malhotra has invited the four because all of them are in some way or the other connected to the death of his daughter Maya (Dias). And this is his chance at revenge.

An entire hour is spent establishing each character's connection with Maya and you hear yourself scream in your head, "Get a move on!" It does get a move on. Kabir Malhotra is killed the next day and international vigilance squad officer (Ranaut) enters the scene. You pump your fist. "Now the action will begin," you tell yourself. Then, the interval arrives.

At this point, you are solemn, even worried about what might be in store for you in the second half. And then your doubts are laid to rest. Yep, its only downhill from that point.

The second half of this 'gritty thriller' gets off to a flashback sequence showing Menon and Maya romancing each other and you want to understand what the hell it is you are doing, watching what can only be described as a parody of whodunits. This one's a why-made-it.

The film is in four languages, by the way. There's Hindi, there's English, then there's the Hindi Ranaut speaks in and the English Ranaut speaks in. She can emote and all but dear Ranaut, agree to a dubbing artiste and our lives will be a lot more joyous.

Abhishek Bachchan - as he always is - sleepwalks through the film, miserly even with the two and half expressions he posseses. The smoldering look is one, the 'I am too smart for my own good' is the second. The half expression is difficult to be slotted in any category.

Shergill and Goswami are okay. Boman Irani, usually dependable, hams throughout. Kher is efficient. Dias is somewhat passable in her bit role. Gauhar Khan as Kher's manager does better than everyone else in the three scenes she has.

Not all is lost though. No sir! Between all that mental tortue you go through watching Game, there are the moments you can't help but chuckle at. Like when Goswami either sticks a dictaphone under the nose or scribbles furiously when someone's talking. She's a journalist, you see. Hilarious. Then there are the various accents each actor talks in. Hilarious.

Then, there's the background score. 'Its a gaaaaaaaame,' you are told in the opening credits. 'Its a gaaaaaaaaame,' you are told in the scene that follows. And again in the sequence after. Get it. At no point are you supposed to foget that 'its a gaaaaaame'. And you don't.

'Game Over', though, is what you really look forward to.