Film Review: Players

Director: Abbas-Mustan
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Bobby Deol, Sonam Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Omi Vaidya, Sikander Kher, Vinod Khanna
Rating: 1/2 star

For years, people have joked about a big budget Bollywood movie that would eradicate plot and characters altogether and simply cut to the idiocy. Abbas-Mustan have finally done it. Players is a spectacular achievement in stupidity and monotony. Just when you thought that nothing could ever be more rubbish than Prince, along comes Players to prove you wrong.

The film stars the ensemble of Abhishek Bachchan, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Bobby Deol, Sonam Kapoor and Bipasha Basu and it makes you pay for every two seconds of pleasure with 10 seconds of pain, courtesy of the ghastly acting and plot holes large enough to fit the planet Mars. Although terrible, the movie does raise interesting questions: Why does Bollywood keep assuming the audience is a flock of extinct, flightless birds? Why would anyone still hire Omi Vaidya to act in a movie? Why would someone like Vinod Khanna agree to be in this mess?

Messrs Abbas-Mustan mercilessly mutilate both The Italian Job films and replace their chic vibe for one that resembles an acid-trip version of Yule Love Story. Here, we have good guy Charlie (Abhishek Bachchan) who wants to build a school for kids. In order to do this, he draws up a plan to steal some gold that is on board a train travelling from Russia to Romania. To this end, he rounds up a motley gang of Victor Dada (Vinod Khanna), Ronnie (Bobby Deol), Riya (Bipasha Basu), Spider (Neil Nitin Mukesh), Bilal (Sikander Kher), Sunny (Omi Vaidya) and Naina (Sonam Kapoor). Just like in the original films, one gang member double-crosses the rest and makes off with the booty, and the others set out to take revenge.

Like in Abbas-Mustan’s last release Race, there are twists, and the plot jumps more lights than a runaway ambulance. In fact, the narrative is so jumbled that even the actors can’t seem to keep track of what exactly is meant to be happening. Soon enough, it becomes clear that the cash-hungry director-duo never quite understood what the previous makers of The Italian Job did right. From the one-liners and the “cool” heroes to the scantily clad heroines, the whole of Players seems to sweat from Abbas-Mustan’s exertion to do something, anything, to make the scenes masaledaar enough for the single-screen crowd.

The characters, just like the lines, are monumentally foolish. Ten years ago, it was cool for Bollywood actors to mouth words like “babay”. At one point, our heroes buy their heist equipment from a store called Gizmo; it’s the sort of visionary immaturity that bridges generations of filmmakers. The special effects, like those seen during the train heist and the car chases, are plenty but just thrown at us mindlessly. The tone of the movie is posh gloss, but it stinks like a landfill.

Abhishek Bachchan is as uncharismatic as ever. The discrepancy between Mr. Bachchan’s heroic posturing and his expressions, which come off as a meek hybrid of those of Vivek Mushran and Nakul Kapur, has never been more glaring. Sikander Kher’s character carries all the intensity of a Sesame Street muppet. Sonam Kapoor delivers her lines in a monotone, her mood is red, her clothes are blue and her performance is horrible. Both Neil Nitin Mukesh and Bobby Deol are unwatchable.

Players is an awful, uninteresting, infuriating, and endless mess. Those with low cinematic pain thresholds should skip it. But the film is legendarily bad, and fans of truly wretched cinema will love what is perhaps Bollywood’s most inept remake of all-time just for the jaw-drop value alone. Double bill Players with the also ludicrous Luck and you’ll have something—a new kind of accidental torture-porn cinema.