Cinemaah

Turkeyed!


Game is the first film by adman Abhinay Deo, and it must be dream to work with budgets that allow shooting in exotic locations, plus a large cast and no expenses spared on action sequences.

How come nobody read the script and asked, like an exasperated character in the film does, “What the hell is going on?”

When four dubious people are invited to a Greek island by billionaire Kabir Malhotra with specific baits, you think it’s going to be a Gumnaam or Shalimar kind of cat-and-mouse thriller.  But the tycoon is killed and it turns into a whodunit for the Interational Vigilance Squad (huh?) headquarted in London.  Sia Agnihotri (Kangna Ranaut) has to investigate who is the murderer.  (Don’t ask why the Greeks don’t handle their own affairs.)

But the characters are from Turkey, Thailand, London and Mumbai, so apart from Greece, we get to ‘travel’ to these other destinations. There is a particularly spiffy chase in Turkey, where casino owner Neil Menon (Abhishek Bachchan) operates, which is monitored by Sia and team in London, which seems difficult unless the whole city was studded with cameras beaming to the IVS offices.

Suddenly Neil’s love story with Maya (Sarah Jane Dias) pops up and he goes on a revenge spree to punish her tormentors. Then a character who was supposed to be a suspect turns out to be a cop, and you wonder if IVS condones official facilities being used for personal vendetta. The English boss seems totally bewildered about what his staff is up to.

But the film shoot off on so many directions, with so little purpose,that you give up keeping track after a while.  Performances: Boman Irani (as Thailand PM in waiting, really!) overacting, Jimmy Shergill trying to underplay, Kangna Ranaut pretending to be in a Hollywood film and Abhishek Bachchan probably wondering what he is doing in Turkey.