Another Timepass Thriller. Review on Players

Actually, want to give 2 and half stars. Nobody had to lose anything by doing this thriller. And nobody did, I guess. This is a Bollywodization of the English movie, *The Italian Job. *You can see a bit of *Mission Impossible 2 *in some scenes of it too.

The movie starts with a casting in golden letters and ends with three golden cars running on the road. Treasure grabbing, and therefore, greed and rivalry become central in the movie. The fast action of the movie keeps a tab on that.

A team of criminals, each an expert in different departments come together to carry on a heist with a philanthropic aim -building of an orphanage(another instance of Bollywodization). Romanian gold which is being transferred from Russia is robbed from a moving train in a daring heist using manual efforts and stunts, computer hacking and illusion/magic. The heist is successful but then comes the double crossing by one of the players. And then the efforts of the honest dishonest guys to beat their dishonest dishonest partner. Add to this some romance and romance triangle, father-daughter love, an invalid small girl, some comedy, some friendship.and you have a movie that will get the minimum required flocking to the cinema hall. At least that is what the producer and the directors must've thought.

The movie has been shot at various locales-Russia, India, New Zealand and shows some good sights. The camerawork is good as per the requirements of an action movie but sometimes Abbas Mastan seem to be playing with the camera and maybe some distraction results.

Abhishek Bachchan has everything to gain from this movie. Bobby Deol looks jaded and his role is small and less significant than that of some other players. Same goes for Vinod Khanna. Omi Vaidya has been given a meatier role with some comedy too. Neil Nitin Mukesh must work more on his dialogue delivery and acting. He is not very convincing as a villain. Sikander Kher is okay, some comedy some average stuff to do. Johnny Lever has a few laughter producing scenes. I think it is largely the fault in script because of which the actors seem to be rushed into trying to produce effects and move.

There have been a lot of movies around the same theme and therefore, *Players * presents nothing new really. Also, the problem with the movie is that there is not much scope for character development and acting or even for presenting one 'Rasa' well, something which was done better in *The Italian Job. *You won't feel the exhilaration of romance, or the emotion between father and daughter, or sympathy for the invalid little girl, or tears for the sacrifice because just when you start to feel one emotion, something else comes and distracts you fast. There are no great dialogues. The editing is not very good. The song on Sonam Kapoor is average; I don't remember any other song which can be called even that. Bipasha is glamorous, Sonam looks beautiful sometimes, sometimes not.

The planning and research for the crime seems childish at times. What goes in the name of automobile engineering, strategics, illusion, etc would at times convince only a village idiot.

Abbas, wake up Mastan, or vice versa.